CT Now she is my only link to finding their secret base....

Did Vader forget that the stormtroopers had rounded up a few rebels on the Tantive IV? I'm sure some of those would have broken under interrogation and revealed the whereabouts of the rebels' base. They would have been easier to "interview" than Leia.......

 

I would guess that the navi-co-ordinates are not known by the ordinary crew - and that the flight computer was wiped.

 

At the time the ship was captured, the Senate was still a thing, making the capture illegal. Vader covered his tracks by destroying the ship and murdering the entire crew, reporting them destroyed by asteroids, IIRC.

 

I'm not aware that the crew was murdered, the original ANH novelization did suggest capture, they were probably send to the spice mines of Kessel (as Threepio suggested earlier) and never seen or heard of again.

 

Could have been a case of "move all captured rebels to ship, destroy ship so it looks like an asteroid has wrecked it". Result - wreck full of corpses for the Senate to inspect.

 

I'm assuming they were executed pretty swiftly after their capture otherwise they would have suffered the same interrogation that Leia did on the Death Star - and I can't imagine they would have been as strong as her. I'm assuming also that there were no rebels taken prisoner at Scarif either. Pretty shortsighted of the Empire really! If they wanted to know where the rebel base was, all they had to do was interrogate a few prisoners - one of them would have snapped I'm sure.

 

Iron_lord

In both the original screenplay and the novelization Vader orders to have the ship "vaporized" to leave nothing, therefore the Tantive IV was probably released from the bay and burned up in Tatooine's atmosphere, leaving no traces whatsoever.

Palp_Faction

While up to this day I'm not sure what kind of fate awaited Leia and the others when they were let outside the Endor bunker in ROJ (Emperor: "Your friends will die"), the scene in ANH remains at least ambiguous, and the novelization states, that the captain of Vader's ship "listened with satisfaction to the reports of captured men and material coming from the rebel ship."

As for the Alderaanian Guards captured, we don't even know whether these had ever set foot on Dantooine or Yavin IV. I'm certain that the Alliance leaders made sure to minimize the amount of people who knew the exact location.

 

Considering what we saw in "Rogue One", I doubt it. Everyone aboard the Tantive IV might not have been to Yavin IV, but obviously Vader did not consider them a viable source of information compared to Leia.

 

i listened to parts of the radio show not that long ago and i remember vader said some people had killed themselves before he could get to them.

 

oncafar

That came straight from Alan Dean Foster's ANH novelization:

"I know that several transmissions were beamed to this vessel by spies within that system. When we traced those transmissions back to the individuals with whom they originated, they had the poor grace to kill themselves before they could be questioned."

It would appear ADF embellished the original screenplay dialogue, present both in the January 1, 1976 and the final March 15, 1976 screenplay ("Several transmissions were beamed to this ship by spies, who are unfortunately dead.").

 

Vader probably dismissed the significance of common rebel troopers, whether they could have told him anything or not. Vader didn't wait for a response from Captain Antilles before breaking his neck, so his patience would have worn thin quickly with any other rebel trooper. Leia on the other hand, had some political value.

 

I think that RO makes a bit of plot hole here.

Since it shows R2 and C3PO in the actual base, it is likely that Leia's ship was there.
So other crewmen would know of the location of the base.
And that was Vader's primary goal, that an get the plans back.
So why would he be foolish enough to kill all onboard before questioning them?
We see some soldiers and some droids taken prisoner.
And with droids, it would be easy to get the truth, just hack their programing and they will tell you anything.

Before, it seemed that Leia's ship was on route elsewhere and got sent the plans and since this was her official ship, it had never been near the rebel base and only Leia knew where it was.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

yessss i thought we could have been spared the 3po/r2 cameo for reasons like this. also idk, i would never allow 3po on the base at all frankly? or to know anything about where it was.

 

Samuel Vimes wrote

Since it shows R2 and C3PO in the actual base, it is likely that Leia's ship was there.

Despite the fact that I'm still wondering why they were there in the first place (for what purpose other than fan service?), I still take it that the Tantive IV was Antilles ship and they merely picked up Leia somewhere in space / had Bail switch ship so that he could return to Alderaan.

THREEPIO I think she was a passenger on our
last voyage. A person of some
importance, sir -- I believe. Our
captain was attached to...

Threepio refers to her as a passenger which I take as genuine information, but he wasn't told much more. Considering he tells Luke rightaway that he's been involved with the rebellion, Antilles was apparently prudent enough not to provide Threepio with any more sensitive information.

I seriously doubt that the crewmen were allowed to set foot on Yavin IV. ANH made it abundantly clear that the survival of the Alliance depended on keeping this location (codename "Massassi"?) secret.
I'm also certain that all the Alliance supporters were brought blind-folded to Yavin IV in Rogue One. Undoubtedly they wanted to see where the funds they provided had gone to, but I'm confident they agreed that the name of the location had to be kept secret.

Before, it seemed that Leia's ship was on route elsewhere and got sent the plans and since this was her official ship, it had never been near the rebel base and only Leia knew where it was.

I concur.

 

3P0 may be a blabbermouth, but at least he's an ignorant one. I doubt he had a clue which planet he was on. Even if he felt an inclination to ask, how many people have ever willingly given him a straight answer to his questions? R2 is the only one who ever seemed to tolerate his company, and he's smart enough to not tell him anything classified.

 

I concur with Iron Lord and Sarge at the beginning of this thread. I look at ANH from the perspective of The Force Unleashed I. Vader would be like, "She's Bail's daughter. I can find Mothma through her."

 

Sarge i think you are right. i retract my 3po statement. he never seems to know where he is or what he is doing. lol

 

About C3PO, consider what he says at the start of the film.

So it seems he knows her and it also seems that he has been with Leia in situations where she has been in trouble but been able to get out of it.
What he says to Luke is either him lying or he for some reason does not know what Leia looks like. Which is a bit odd.

As for the Yavin base.
In RO, I didn't see Jyn getting blindfolded and she wasn't even a member of the rebellion and the rebels planned to just let her go after he job was done.

Also, if the empire gets a person or droid that just walked outside the base.
Then they can learn that the base is on a moon orbiting a red gas giant and they would also know about the temple. To quote V, "That'll be enough for a clever man."
Knowing that the rebel base is on a moon around a red gas giant and it has an ancient temple on it, that would narrow things down a lot.
So even someone that doesn't know the name or location can give away crucial knowledge.
And with droids it is even easier, just download the information from the brain and now they can look at actual photos.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

Samuel Vimes

You are right, he refers to the "Princess", suggesting he had knowledge about her identity. Yet it's a strange programming he exhibits, telling Luke about the rebellion but then reducing the "Princess" to a mere passenger...I must rewatch the scene to see whether Artoo whistled "Shut up you tall blabbermouth".

As for the Yavin base. In RO, I didn't see Jyn getting blindfolded and she wasn't even a member of the rebellion and the rebels planned to just let her go after he job was done.

Since this is technically a "Classic Trilogy" only thread, I'm tempted to file this under another RO inconsistency. I also didn't understand why Captain Andor referred to "Yavin IV" as none of the Rebel characters in ANH ever did, add to this that the screenplay identified the Rebel facilities as "Massassi stronghold" (codename?).

And you're correct that a graphic eyewitness description of the location could have given the location away.

To me it looks that the obvious Imperial lack of knowledge of the Rebels secret base requires rationalization.

Either there are dozens of similiar ancient ruins orbiting a red gas giant and/or the Alliance (in the OT) made absolutely certain to limit the amount of people travelling to and from Yavin IV which could have provided such an eyewitness report, should they ever be captured.

Thus the only ones that could provide a graphic description would be fighter pilots and the pilots of ships landing on Yavin IV. Certainly, the Alliance leaders must have anticipated the possibility that any of those could be captured and tortured for information.

While I'm confident that astro droids could have been programmed to perform a memory wipe prior to capture, the pilots are a completely different matter.

Now, according to the original screenplay drafts the Rebel spies committed suicide, so we are looking at either this option or some kind of "amnesia pill".

IMHO, the latter could explain why Vader got so frustrated and impatient and didn't mind to kill the prisoners (realizing they had become useless as a source of information), one photo of the scene could suggest that Antilles wasn't his first victim:

 

Bazinga'd wrote

So lets focus the inconsistencies on the CT.

Inconsistencies? I don't know what you are talking about, I'm on a ... scientific mission to Yavin IV and Professor Dodonna.

 

Having slept over it, I'd like to elaborate on that "amnesia pill theory" I mentioned yesterday, especially since - AFAIK - no EU contribution has ever touched this particular issue.

As for the top brass of the Alliance, I'm confident that some or all underwent training in the swan sensana "art of mind control" which Lucas had Obi-Wan explicitly mentioned in the third draft of ANH to explain Leia's resistance to Vader's interrogation techniques.

However, I don't think that every Alliance member or pilot received such a training though it's admittedly unknown whether Biggs - a new pilot same as Luke and others by the time of ANH - did receive such a training.

While some of the older and fanatic Alliance pilots might have preferred suicide to capture, I think it's safe to say that the same couldn't be realistically expected for new, young and inexperienced pilots. So the Alliance must have anticipated that a young pilot's fighter could be incapacitated by the Empire, and that the captured pilot would have provided a description of Yavin IV, which - as Samuel Vimes suggested - would have been rather unique and would have probably provided the Empire with the correct location of the hidden Rebel base or at least a candidate worthy of investigation.

(Based on McQuarrie's preproduction painting of the Great Temple and his additional artwork from 1995 - the absence of foliage covering the ancient structures begs for explanation as it would have provided a natural defilade - and the suggestion in Complete Locations that the artefacts in Palpatine's Office anteroom in ROTS came from Yavin IV, it has become a pet theory of mine, that Yavin IV was still an official Imperial archeological excavation site and therefore the perfect cover for Rebel activities, but a thorough Imperial investigation would have probably revealed the truth)

So to me it increasingly looks like an amnesia pill is the only possible explanation. How would that work? Swallowing the amnesia pill (not to dissimilar from the blue pill in The Matrix) would affect the short-term memory of the Rebel pilot (yet the long-term memory including flying skills etc.wouldn't be affected). What time period would it erase from the pilot's mind? Obviously the time period where he or she could have still remembered the location of the hidden Rebel base.

Admittedly, we never learned why the Alliance abandoned its earlier base on Dantooine. However, considering the fact that by the time of ESB they had run out of base options and had to settle for one of the harshest and most desolate environments (Hoth), it appears they couldn't really be too picky, i.e. there must have been some very good reason why to abandon Dantooine in the first place (nevertheless it's all too obvious that the Empire had no clue about that particular location until Leia mentioned it in ANH, so whatever safety measures the Alliance used previously, these obviously worked perfectly).

With the "amnesia pill theory" the decision to abandon Dantooine would be crystal clear: The amnesia effects were no longer covering the secret Dantooine location, so the Alliance had to find a new base of operations...

In RO, I didn't see Jyn getting blindfolded and she wasn't even a member of the rebellion and the rebels planned to just let her go after he job was done.

...nevertheless and perhaps under the condition that she would swallow an amnesia pill.

Of course, it's entirely up to the Lucasfilm Story Group whether they want to provide a rationalization or leave the issue ambiguous. I for one don't think Bail Organa and Mon Mothma built the Alliance over 20 years only to overlook or neglect safety measures to keep the location of the Rebel base a secret.

CC Pabawan

 

regarding 3po, it was explained in the radio drama. leia programmed him to not share any sensitive information and i think *that* is why he won't tell luke who the princess is. i think it was just left out of the movie as it would end up being a tedious detail. it was quite tedious in the radio drama lol. (unless they made it up for the radio drama just to fill in this small plot hole haha)

later after r2 decides he can trust 'old ben' and shares the message, 3po can of course talk about the princess again as the beans are spilled.

anyway he's probably programmed to never share any sensitive info about the rebel base.