CT Tracking of the Falcon after DS "escape"...

Sorry if this has been tackled before. I feel bad enough asking ANH questions after almost 40 years of viewing. :-\

So...the fact that Tarkin is taking "an awful risk" tells us that tracking the Falcon is the ONLY plan en vogue. Or is it? What if our heroes get shot during the many shootouts in the DS/hangar and the plan isn't allowed to come to fruition? Are the stormtroopers in on it? (and is that why they're purported to be such "awful shots"?) How are the TIEs supposed to frame the battle if it's only supposed to appear legit...energy dialed back on the laser cannons? Make sure the Falcon's shields are up? (We know they're manned, and we see them hit the Falcon at least once...and hear/see what seems to be shots connecting with the Falcon rocking a few times).

It seems that just destroying the Falcon is itself a decent short-term plan, so yeah, letting it go is indeed an awful risk. Which makes it being a "Plan B" - if it escapes the TIE assault - unlikely (it wouldn't be risky at all, just a smart failsafe). If destroying the Falcon were truly Option 1, why deploy only a squadron; or just take it out with one of the many anti-aircraft guns. Or any number of possibilities. Or was this a, "Well, if they survive all of this trooper blaster fire, we have to track them, 'cause clearly the gods have spoken" kind of thing.

And so, if we take it as it appears, the TIEs only showing up to give the impression of a battle, I offer up the thought that bothered me while watching it this time:

What did they tell those TIE pilots before they deployed them?

 

"Fire a little and miss a lot. Make it look good. Vader is watching. And he hasn't choked anyone all day."

 

They only needed one person to escape with the Princess in order to follow the Falcon to the Rebel Base. Capturing any or most of the others was still an option. When Han & Chewbacca were running at the Stormtroopers they would have set their lazer guns on kill or severely wounded. They did not know how many Rebels were aboard the Death Star and besides the presence of Obi Wan was clouding Vader and Tarkin's judgement. They needed to act quickly to eliminate the threat of a Jedi Knight lurking and sabotaging behind closed doors. The TIE fighters pilots were instructed to give a show of force and no more. Make it easy for just about anyone to disappear believing their own luck.

 

Maybe it's just me, then; was no one bothered that these pilots were essentially sent to their deaths as an essential part of the plan? When I posed this question to some coworkers, they just said things like, "Hey, it's the Empire, and they're soldiers". Granted, if they were true company (wo)men, they may have even volunteered to die with such honour (being an integral part of the demise of the rebellion), kamikaze-like.

Getting irrationally sentimental in my old age.

 

I don't think they were supposed to die, but as combat pilots, that's the chance they take. If they had been better at taking evasive action, they might have lived, but they had no way of knowing that the freighter they were attacking had two of the best shots in the galaxy manning the turrets.

 

IIRC, Leia said in the ANH novelization that the Death Star could just as well send a 100 TIE fighters. Apparently, Vader felt that the crew of the Falcon could handle 4 TIE fighters, probably the only patrol group the Falcon would inevitably encounter.

Quite possible the patrol fighters wondered about the absence of re-enforcements but did their job to their best abilities. And they were possibly at a disadvantage (like their comrades in ESB) with explicit orders to cripple and incapacitate but not to destroy the Falcon.

Curiously, I always interpreted Tarkin's "awful risk" as his fear that the Falcon crew might find the homing beacon and deposit it close to a star or a black hole.

The Death Star would have then exited from hyperspace and found itself trapped in a gravitational field that would pull it into the star or black hole...

 

The Empire and the First Order doesn't care about the lives of their soldiers. They're insignificant in the grand scheme of things. More where they came from.

 

Okay, this makes total sense. It covers all the bases; the TIE pilots don't end up with any hesitation about doing their job, and essentially keep at it until they're destroyed. Could've been one of the "lesser" squadrons Vader deployed, as well. And on the off chance someone gets in a lucky(?) shot and the Falcon IS destroyed, no great loss.

So...at what point do you feel this plan is set in motion? When Vader and Tarkin realize there is a rescue taking place, and Vader says that Leia "May still be of some use to us"? (With stormtrooper fire then set for stun or just outright told to miss?)

or...

On the fly, when the Falcon makes it out of the hangar and has cleared tractor beam range? (Homing beacon having been installed as "standard procedure Plan B").

 

IMHO, it was deliberately made unclear by George Lucas. Had the audience learned prematurely, that Vader facilitated their escape, the tension for the audience would have gone. So he delayed the revelation (through Leia) until they were clear of the TIE patrol (and yet, the myth of the inprecise stormtrooper survives until this very day).

IIRC, the ANH novelization had Vader suggest that just to confront Leia with Artoo ("The plans you stole are back in our hands") would have broken her final resistance, but that was a gamble. He then probably realized that letting her and Artoo escape the Death Star and unwillingly lead it to the hidden Rebel base was the better option and persuaded Tarkin to go along with that plan.

I would speculate that once the Imperials had learned that the rescue party had vanished into and survived the trash compactor, Vader issued orders to shoot but to miss to the stormtroopers. The Princess being crushed inside the compactor would have accomplished nothing, it was probably set to automatic, when the walls closed in.

 

Immediately after the Death Star's tractor beam pulled the Millennium Falcon into the Death Star, Vader told Tarkin, "They must be trying to return the stolen plans to the princess. She may yet be of some use to us."

Vader then explained his plan to Tarkin to let them all escape with the princess so the Death Star could go blow-up the Rebel base after the Millennium Falcon led them to it. Therefore every single Imperial (whether officer, stormtrooper, or TIE pilot) was under strict orders to let them go while making it look otherwise. Everywhere else in the film the Imperials are scary and deadly, but on the Death Star they seemingly couldn't hit a target to save their lives.

Yes, this means that Tarkin ordered the four sentries in the TIE fighters to die.

(Fun side issue: Remember when the Imperials took the "scanners" on board the Falcon? That's when they installed the tracking device.)

 

Binary_Sunset

I beg to differ, the scanning crew went aboard the Falcon and was immediately knocked out. More likely that the tracking device was installed while no one was watching or latest when the stormtroopers carried out their fallen comrades.

I'd go as far as speculating that Vader had given the stormtroopers guarding the Falcon explicit orders to abandon their posts the moment they saw him in the corridor fighting Kenobi...

 

Am I the only one who thinks Vader acted very stupid when coming up with this plan? If he thought they were trying to return the plans to the Princess, then surely that meant they actually had the plans. So all he'd have to do is order the stormtroopers to disable the Falcon so it couldn't take off. After that, it's only a matter of time before the heroes get captured.

 

DARTHLINK

Retrieving the Death Star plans was not Vader's top priority. Motti made it pretty clear during the conference that it was irrelevant who had gotten hold of these, erroneously assuming the Death Star didn't have a weakness that could be exploited.

Vader's top priority was to find the Rebels' hidden base. He had traced the plans to Princess Leia but once she realized it was her, he saw a much better opportunity to locate the Rebel base through her:

VADER I have traced the Rebel spies to
her. Now she is my only link to find
their secret base!

 

Good point. Let me rephrase that: Remember when the Imperials took the "scanners" on board the Falcon? They were actually ordered to install a tracking device.

 

Couldn't the tracking device be installed on the outside?

 

Possible. According to the radio drama the Rebel technicians on Yavin IV eventually found it, but it wouldn't say where (my pet theory nevertheless remains in Solo's own smuggling compartment )

Keycube

When was Vader's new plan set in motion? I'd now say not before the princess and company had managed to free themselves from the garbage compactor. Before they were trapped in cell block AA 23. Withdrawing the stormtrooper squad or providing the rescue party with an opportunity to escape would have been so obvious that even Solo would have noticed.

Once they had freed themselves of the garbage compactor, Vader was able to play along and maintain the illusion they continued their escape unassisted.

 

They were probably disposable clones sent on a suicide run. This is why cloning troops fits the Empire's MO so well.

 

Very likely yes. We saw Obi-Wan doing just that in AOTC. The device was small enough to be held in one hand. That was 25 years before ANH. So it's very likely a technically more advanced Empire would have the means to attach such a device on the outside during those hours when the Falcon's crew was away. It took Obi-Wan just a second. And Jango never noticed until at least when they were close to Geonosis. Or he did notice but couldn't do anything about it. Han or anyone else on the Falcon would not have found the tracker during their hurried escape. If someone did find it on Yavin IV it would have been too late.

 

Well, we're talking about Jango, so we would have known the moment he noticed. (Which we did, in fact.)

 

So why didn't Leia direct the Falcon to a neutral location where she could change ships and take Artoo to the hidden base without being tracked by them Empire?
- She knows the Death Star can destroy planets because she watched Alderaan blow up.
- She knows the Death Star wasn't built in the Alderaan system so it must be hyper-capable.
- She speculates that the Empire let them go because that was the only explanation for the ease of their escape.

In that case, why lead the Empire directly to the Rebel base? She believes they must be tracking the Falcon. It's a pretty big risk to take to think that the Rebel technicians would be able to analyze the technical readouts of that battle station and find a weakness they could exploit in the few hours between their arrival and the Death Star's arrival at Yavin. What if there is a weakness, but they don't have the materials or weapons on hand to exploit it? Or there is a weakness but it takes three days instead of a few hours to find it? Or what if there wasn't a weakness at all? By leading Vader directly to Yavin, she risked the complete destruction of her movement and it took a number of unlikely miracles to save them.

 

Because Star Wars wasn't written by a military tactician.

 

All those questions I have been wondering about myself, and don't have the answers. Firstly, Leia was not in charge on the Falcon, Han was. It was his ship and he decided where they would go. He already felt that he had done more than enough for his money. So why risk his life even more for a girl that has only gotten him in trouble ever since he met her? Let's face it, he was the boss on his ship. With even Kenobi gone neither Luke nor Leia would have been enough to change his mind. When he listened to others he got into trouble, so he probably decided to have his own way from then on. Maybe Leia suspected Vader and Tarkin already knew the Rebel base location from Kenobi? Maybe Vader Force-felt it when they dueled. After all they had been friends long ago. Vader might have developed "mind-reading" skills? Maybe Han, Luke and Leia were in such a hurry escaping from the DS that they forgot to reprogram the navigation computer to a destination other than Yavin? Maybe they set it for Yavin and the Empire somehow hacked into it, then had no chance to change the destination because the Falcon ran into those TIE fighters? Maybe there simply was no safe stopover between the DS and Yavin that was not controlled by the Empire? Maybe there was, but they felt speed was more important and so they went straight to Yavin instead? Maybe they thought the Empire had already gotten the Yavin location from some other source (Kenobi, mind-probes used on Leia?), that they felt the Falcon was not the only option for leading them to Yavin? When the Falcon jumped into hyperspace wasn't it mentioned somewhere that its flight path had been traced? Maybe Yavin was the Empire's second or third choice after Dantooine anyway. Maybe it was nowhere near as hidden or remote as the Rebels hoped it would be. Who knows? We can only speculate but I think there is no plot hole here. Leia was aware they were being tracked at some point, but then it was too late to change course. Besides Han might have objected. He was pretty sure the Falcon was untrackable. Being the captain he was in charge of the ship's course, regardless of Leia's doubts. We can see how overly confident he is. I doubt he would have listened to Leia at that point. They didn't discuss their situation much either. The discussion was pretty much over when Luke entered the cockpit. Shortly after they had arrived at Yavin anyway. Nobody really had much time to think. Everything moved very fast.

 

But Han didn't know where the base was either, so he couldn't set course until Leia told him where to go. So she has to bear the responsibility for leading the DS to Yavin.

Another theory is that she decided it was better to lead the DS to a military target than to leave Tarkin at loose ends; he might just decide to blow up another innocent world just to draw out the rebels. It was a risky choice on Leia's part, but it paid off.

 

CloneWarBrent wrote

So why didn't Leia direct the Falcon to a neutral location where she could change ships and take Artoo to the hidden base without being tracked by them Empire?

Here is my reply from another thread to the issue:

"Please feel free to ignore my rationalization in post # 32 as the actual dialogue in ANH is rather self-revealing considering the established motivations of the characters without the need to explicitly spell out everything:

LEIA That doesn't sound too hard. Besides,
they let us go. It's the only
explanation for the ease of our
escape.

HAN Easy... you call that easy?

LEIA They're tracking us!

(logical conclusion > Leia and Artoo need to change ship to prevent the Death Star finding and destroying the hidden Rebel base)

HAN Not this ship, sister.

(Solo is clearly in "denial". He wouldn't be one of the best smugglers if he just ignored that possibility. Remember his earlier "rather her than me"? The Death Star would forever pursue his ship, the only way to prevent that is to bring the Death Star to Yavin IV which is his only means to ensure that the Empire looses interest in the Falcon and to provide him with the time and opportunity to remove this darned homing beacon)

Frustrated, Leia shakes her head.

(as an established and able diplomat she must have the ability to put herself into another fella's shoes and to see the other side of an argument. She is very well aware of Solo's concerns even though he doesn't voice them explicitly. There is little she can do to change his mind)

LEIA At least the information in Artoo is
still intact.

(Since Solo seems to insist they are going to Yavin IV, she puts all her hope on the possibility that the analysis of the Death Star plans will reveal a weakness the Alliance can exploit)

HAN What's so important? What's he
carrying?

LEIA The technical readouts of that battle
station. I only hope that when the
data is analyzed, a weakness can be
found. It's not over yet!

HAN It is for me, sister! Look, I ain't
in this for your revolution, and I'm
not in it for you, Princess. I expect
to be well paid. I'm in it for the
money!

(While Leia may have considered to change his mind by suggesting that they rendezvous with a Rebel vessel that carries Solo's reward, his insistance now suggests that he probably won't agree to that either, add to this that the Yavin IV base didn't have any cash - according to the radio drama - and had only precious metals available as compensation. Also, Solo wants to know the location of the hidden Rebel base as leverage, if they don't provide him with the reward he might sell the information to the Empire)

LEIA You needn't worry about your reward.
If money is all that you love, then
that's what you'll receive!

(Leia is angry and frustrated realizing that their conversation won't serve a constructive purpose anymore and decides to leave the cockpit. To take a bathroom break, to appeal to Chewie or else)."

 

I've always thought that the plan changed quite late.

The boys break Leia out of the cell block - this comes as a surprise to Tarkin. They genuinely chase our heroes through the Death Star who nevertheless get aboard the Falcon and with the tractor beam disabled they escape. At this point Vader points out that they have a tracking beacon aboard the ship (standard Imperial practice, probably) so they should let them go and not send reinforcements for the sentries, who they know are no match for the Falcon. Tarkin then says:

"You're sure the tracking beacon is aboard?" and so on.