CT Was the trench run necessary?

I think that Galen believed it could be done with a targeting computer, but he wasn't a pilot in the same way Wedge was, who had been in the Imperial Academy and understood the limitations of targeting computers. He didn't understand that such a shot was all but impossible. Obi-wan, from where he was in the Netherworld of the Force, could see what Galen couldn't. He saw that the shot could only be made by a Jedi and that's why he started talking to Luke when he was preparing for takeoff. Jedi know the difference between knowledge and wisdom. At least, now they do.

INT. LUKE'S X-WING FIGHTER - COCKPIT

Luke looks up and smiles. He concentrates on the exhaust port, then fires his laser torpedoes.

EXT. SURFACE OF THE DEATH STAR

Luke's torpedoes shoot toward the port and seems to simply disappear into the surface and not explode. But the shots do find their mark and have gone into the exhaust port and are heading for the main reactor.

Does that answer your question?

 

After R1 the obvious question isn't why didn't Erso simply make the instability tie into the Death Star firing in the first place?

This is the problem with going down so deep into what is effectively the McGuffin.

Erso's plan to destroy the station revolves around making a one in a million shot that is to all intents and purposes impossible to make and I don't think he was thinking of anyone with Force powers being taken into his equation.

Good call. Galen is certainly a knowledge not wisdom guy. Lyra was his wisdom angel.

Question: I don't know if this is totally clear or not. Is the idea that after Luke's shot the Death Star would explode regardless of whether they were about to fire?

Would a chain reaction had destroyed the station like Death Star II or did the fact that they were firing at the same time make the explosion quicker and more spectacular?

In light of Rogue One the ending is a bit of a query for me because they analyze the attack and give it a good chance of success so ask Tarkin if he wants his ship to leave. Yet they presumably don't know about the deliberate fault so how do they come up with that?

Save for the intentional fault which itself is nigh impossible it doesn't seem clear as to why if there was no fault why it would be rated as having any success.

The point in ANH before was that the Rebels needed the plans to find any possible fault and did. Then the Empire sussed out this attack plan by their approach and realized that it could succeed.

 

The "gag" was that right when the primary weapon is fired, the Death Star explodes. For ROTJ, it was more of a chain reaction that we see spread outwards in order to give the audience the thrill the escape.

As to Tarkin, it was that he is told that the Rebel fighters are targeting one specific spot. He ignored the suggestion to evacuate,because he didn't think it was possible that the Death Star could be destroyed by one specific attack and he was blinded by his arrogance. As noted in the novelization for RO, Krennic realized that there had to be some weakness for all the effort to steal the plans. That Galen had betrayed them in the worst possible way, but it was too late for him to warn Tarkin.

 

Tarkin was so intent to destroy the base to stop the plans from being stolen that he actually sealed his own fate. If he would have been patient then Krennic would have been able to save the day for the Empire.

 

The problem is that Dodonna states that a direct hit on the port is required to start a chain reaction. In all my years I always perceived the briefing simulation as depicting the chain reaction working its way to the reactor.

Blowing up the reactor would inevitably, eventually blow up the station. Describing the blowing up of the reactor causing a chain reaction that will blow up the station seems like redundancy.

A port that can accommodate a missile which can then travel to the centre of the station reactor, unimpeded, isn't exactly a subtle or obscure weakness. You can imagine staff engineer or an Imperial supervisor would likely have noticed it and suggested or demanded a fail safe. Like putting some chicken wire across the conduit leading to reactor in case of any piece of debris working its way into the system.

 

I believe this was addressed in the novel Catalyst where Galen Erso tricked Dirctor Krennic into building the Exhaust Port that led right to the reactor core...

 

It was a really cool scene, and I don't think it would've worked as well visually if they were flying on the smooth surface of a giant space ball.

 

That must have been some trick.

 

I didn't read the novel yet so can't give more details on the great trick of Erso's...

 

The "chicken wire" would be the ray shield. The proton torpedo is what is basically impossible to get through.

It needs a direct hit to have impact.

This is the problem with trying to get into the mechanics too deeply. It's fun to do but gets bizarre and into Star Trek TNG territory.

Obviously they had to work within the pre-set parameters from ANH.

The most important point is still that without the plans none of this could happen.

What Rogue One does change up is that they know there is a weakness there that if they can pull off the shot will work (If Erso is to be believed).

 

really all they needed to do was program some drones. but they don't do drones in star wars.

 

We can hardly blame a movie made in 1976 for not foreseeing technological developments in recent years, just as we can't blame it for having dated computer graphics. It looked good enough in its time. And let's not forget the PT where they have all kinds of "drones" in the form of battle droids of all sizes and shapes. Maybe it became obvious that human pilots or soldiers would ultimately be more effective. Why did they grow a clone army when they could just as well have made superior battle droids to fight the Separatists' battle droids, probably even cheaper than clones? It was hinted at in the PT that a human soldier is still superior to a droid in the end. Maybe that's not the case in the real world today, but it is in the SW universe. Even if they wanted to use droid ships, maybe the Rebels just didn't have any. Human pilots and somewhat outdated ships were all they had. It is made clear in SW that some things are impossible "even for a computer". A computer might be superior to an average pilot but then again we are forgetting the Force, which is exactly what allowed Luke to hit the target. In SW the Force is superior to any technology.

 

I suspect George Lucas might beg to differ on this one.

 

But then he should have been consistent and replace all the antique graphics/computer displays along with the other "updates". He chose to keep those but changed pretty much everything else. I'm afraid I'm not really following his reasoning. Personally, the original graphics don't bother me at all.

 

I know it was mentioned earlier, but Pablo has said that the reason for the trench run was for the same reasons the attack in Dam Busters went the way it did.

I never saw that film, but reading a synopsis of the plot, it sounds like they were flying under radar as well as setting up the appropriate vector to bypass the dam's defences.

Dodonna says the reason for torpedoes was due to ray shields. Perhaps the port was protected from a perpendicular attack vector by the ray shields, making it necessary to shoot torpedoes at a parallel vector to get them under the screen.

The argument about the number of guns that can be brought to bear sounds logical, and maybe that is a real world stretegy. But in ANH the ray shields are the only consideration mentioned for why the strategy is necessary, and in regards to Dam Busters from which the Death Star sequence was inspired, a bomb was used that would skip over torpedo nets.

As to the orientation or position of the ray shields, we're never shown nor told. But apparently it was in a manner that a very specific approach vector with proton torpedoes could be angled between them

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