Lit "This is a rebellion isn't it? I rebel." - The Official Rebel Alliance Discussion Thread (spoilers)

She was keeping an eye on Ezra and Sabine because those two kids started to get a little out of control with their alcohol consumption.

 

I'm sure there is a valid IU reason for Mon Mothma not being there. Ditto for Ackbar and the fleet not being at Yavin. It will be interesting to see what these reasons are, hopefully we'll have some more light shed on this soon!

--Adm. Nick

 

People probably want a more exciting explanation, but I guess that makes sense to hide your only remaining founder when the other one has just been killed.

 

Yeah, great point. The obvious answer was in front of us all along. The second Alderaan is destroyed I'm sure that the Alliance High Command ordered the fleet scattered and their top leadership dispersed.

--Adm. Nick

 

And that's why there's only a scratch force of X-wings and Y-wings at Yavin. They weren't expecting to engage the Death Star over their own base, but once they knew it was coming to Yavin they couldn't recall additional ships in time.

 

It does paint the battle and the overall Rebellion is a different light than the old EU version for sure. Which I'm frankly 100% ok with. It's plausible that the original hope was that the plans would be analyzed at Yavin Base and then the findings shared with all scattered Rebel units. Effectively saying "find the Death Star and this is how you destroy it."

Instead, the Death Star follows our heroes to Yavin, and all other Rebel forces are too far away to provide assistance, as they scattered to the four corners of the Galaxy.

--Adm. Nick

 

Did the old Warfare guide have that idea too? That the Rebel fleet (say, Mon Calamari cruisers) had scattered as they wouldn't really stand much of a chance against the Death Star's defenses. Their absence at Hoth is a bit sillier, or maybe the Hoth base was still so new the Rebellion hadn't yet regrouped there yet, only to have to evacuate again after the Empire discovered them there.

Leia did intentionally lure the Death Star to Yavin (as she knew the Falcon got away too easy), and fortunately they found a weakness starfighters could exploit, when that was mostly what they had to work with. Though it was probably also a way to keep the Death Star busy heading for their base rather than any other rebellious planets (like Chandrila or Mon Cala), and the Rebels kind of chose the battlefield too. Being based on a gas giant moon delayed the Death Star by a bit (compared to Alderaan being "in the open" as it were).

I do wonder how big the Rebel fleet will be during Yavin and Hoth. Twilight Company presents the traditional resource-strapped Rebellion, but then post-Endor they win control of most of the known galaxy pretty easily, so their fleet probably increased gradually up until Endor, then probably really expanded quickly after the Empire fell apart..

 

I wouldn't doubt that after Endor the Alliance grew immensely from planets and systems choosing to join their cause after hearing about the victory.

 

I like the concept of the Alliance purposefully drawing the Death Star to Yavin as a means to protect other openly rebellious worlds like Chandrila and Mon Cala. Either way, it is interesting that in the new canon the overall importance of Yavin Base does seem to be diminished.

As for the fleet, we definitely know it was bigger. The old EU really didn't have the fleet get larger and more powerful until the Mon Calamari joined a year post-Yavin, but in the NEU the Mon Cala are already part of the Alliance and Ackbar is already an admiral. Of course, given what we see in Rebels, the ideal of a unified Alliance Navy under Ackbar's leadership would still be a new thing at the time of Yavin, possibility something just a scant few years old.

--Adm. Nick

 

Let's talk about Rebel worlds for a moment. I find it very interesting that Chandrila is considered an openly rebellious world in the NEU, right alongside Mon Cala. Fans have had fun for years trying to explain how Mon Cala avoided being conquered in the early years of the Galactic Civil War, but I do wonder what prevented Chandrila from suffering this fate.

My gut says is might have to do with the world being a prominent Core World, but honestly I still don't see Palpatine tolerating this. Unless we assume that he allowed worlds like Chandrila and Mon Cala to remain openly rebellious as a means to further consolidate his power and expand his military. Worlds that are rebellious but contested are common... but it is clear in the NEU canon that Chandrila has known peace for a longtime.

Basically, I'm trying to rectify this concept with the idea that it was openly rebelling and therefore a truly Rebel world. Thoughts?

--Adm. Nick

 

The Hoth base seemed to relatively new. They seemed to still be setting things up and one of the Rebel guys told Han that they hadn't yet figured out how to adapt their speeders to the cold. Now if they'd been there for years, I think that they'd have probably figured that out already.

The reason for not all the Rebel leaders being in one location (and thus not appearing all in the same movie) was never hard for me to understand, even as a kid. It just makes sense not to have all of your top people gathered in one location where they could potentially be taken out in one shot unless absolutely necessary.

Even the US government realizes this. So when it comes time for the State of the Union Address, most of the top officials (President, VP, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Cabinet members, etc) are all there. BUT, they always make sure to keep a least one or two of them away, just in case (so that at least someone is still around to take over should disaster strike).

 

I wonder what the term "openly rebellious" means in these cases. Are there armed Rebel soldiers on the planets in control of key infrastructure with political support? Or are there simply significant numbers of Rebels hiding on the planets and disrupting Imperial operations? They might even be considered openly rebellious by the Empire simply because there are prominent rebel leaders from those worlds. Without knowing what the Empire's criteria for declaring a world to be in open rebellion is, I think it would be difficult to even guess at what was occurring on Chandrila and Mon Cala. Hopefully we get some more details on that soon. I'd like to see one or both worlds in one of Marvel's series.

 

Excellent points. I'm currently housesitting so I don't have my sources readily available, but I do believe that Mon Cala in the new canon is truly independent of the Empire. Chandrila may fall into one of the categories you mention above. Sullust would fall into the "open rebellion" category as well, Garel too.

--Adm. Nick

 

Prior to the new change over I recall a Dark Horse comic dealing with Darth Vader heading to Chandrilla to check out Mon Mothma's residence there before obliterating it and we learned she had lost at least three members of her family if you exclude her nephew who was supposed to have been a loyalist until he defected almost causing the loss of a star destroyer in the process.
Given this is before the comics came under Marvel control I suspect this is can be readily ignored but maybe Mon Mothma went to great lengths to keep herself viewed as separate from Chandrilla to spare them any reprisals that we currently know about?
They did have survivors of Alderaan hunted down because of Princess Leia's involvement in the destruction of the Death Star which to me was an incredibly stupid thing to do, was there anything else of note revealed in any of those series of comics so far?

 

Yeah, that was in that dreadful "Star Woods" series, with the comically misogynous Palpatine, a waste of a perfectly good character (Birra Seah), and so many other flaws.

 

Taking a step back pre-rebel cells, what is the current canon status of the Delegation of 2000? I assume that the deleted scenes are canon, but what other sources have directly showed this? The mix of world's (or at least their senators) being part of this includes obvious ones like Alderaan, Naboo, Chandrila, and Mon Cala, but there are also some surprising ones, like seeing the Kuati senator.

This is the moment the Republic Loyalist faction basically splits, with some growing wary of Palpatine's power and others embracing it. It's important milestone in the formation of the Rebel movement, but we know so vary little about it.

--Adm. Nick

 

AdmiralNick22 The Delegation of 2,000 and the Petition that goes with it have been mentioned several times in Ultimate Star Wars and the official online Databank, so they're canon. The Databank even uses pictures of the delete scene in question.

 

The Databank specifically references the Delegation in Senator Meena Tills's entry.

http://www.starwars.com/databank/meena-tills

Pablo says of canonicity of deleted scenes "Some are, some aren't, will be considered on a case by case basis":

https://twitter.com/pablohidalgo/status/713040277250805761?lang=en

 

To be precise, both Bail Organa's and Mon Mothma's biography galleries contain a picture from the secret meeting deleted scene.

 

Maybe Angleberger, Bracken, and Gidwitz's newcanon junior novelizations will be so popular that they'll get to write them for the PT as well - with the relevant deleted scenes?

 

Depends on the source. Certainly the X-Wing games portrayed the Rebel Alliance having a significant fleet prior to Yavin, and it also had MonCal cruisers prior to the Mon Calamari joining as well. WEG also implied that the Alliance was building up a significant fleet in the years after the Corellian Treaty was signed.

 

Yeah, I'm guessing those scenes were canon. Considering that Bail, Mon, and stayed on to serve in the Imperial Senate, I'm assuming that the delegation may be more of a failed footnote than anything else.

--Adm. Nick