Books A/V STAR WARS: ROGUE #$^$%&ING ONE: A STAR WARS STORY

And the idea that it isn't ignores Rogue One and ANH, so I guess we're at an impasse.

 

It ignores Rogue One's Galen dialogue certainly. But there's nothing in ANH itself that says that there was any inherent abnormal reactor instability.

Plus, there's the wiggle room that Galen was preparing for the possibility for his holomessage to be intercepted, which means he was being intentionally misleading in case the Empire found it, knowing the Rebels were supposed to get the full plans later on anyway and catch on to what he was saying.

 

And what of the fact that the plan only works because the Alliance was lucky enough to have recruited Luke, a Jedi initiate, mere hours before?

 

"That's impossible, even for a computer"
"It's not impossible"

And General Dodonna heard this conversation and still went ahead with the mission. The fact that General Dodonna thought his team of 29 non-Force using pilots could do the job means Galen may well have thought the same. Whether they were actually correct is another matter.

Also, General Dodonna is an acclaimed military veteran with far more experience than Galen. So if he thought there was a reasonable chance, there's no reason to think Galen wouldn't think so. We saw in ANH that Han Solo has his own ideas, but him being the salutatorian of the Imperial Academy is now Legends, and we see in Canon he's a military washout.

Keep in mind Chief Bast and Tagge also thought there was a threat, and they didn't know anything about Force using recruits in the Alliance.

I know some people don't like to hear this, but there is a possibility someone other than Luke could have blown up the Death Star statistically.

The last time I mentioned this, I was accused, I think by you @BobaMatt , of sequel hate (still not clear how that relates to ANH at all, I have my own issues with the sequels but they have nothing to do with my belief that another could have done what Luke did).

But keep in mind a military general Dodonna thought there was a fair shot, and Cracken says in "Moving Target" that blowing up Death Star 2 won't be as easy. Leia disagrees that it was easy, but Cracken again has more military experience. I have in-universe characters who share the same belief as I do.

Saying no one but Luke could have made the shot is like saying no one except Roger Federer could beat Serena Williams in tennis. Yes, it would be extremely difficult for others to do it, but not impossible.

And Galen was counting on the Alliance to send their best after his exhaust port. He had no idea that Dodonna would be rushed because the Death Star had already found the Rebel base and Dodonna had to dig up 30 soldiers on short notice, minus any of the non-humans we are told have better reflexes (in podracing TPM tie in material).

Remember, Anakin is the only human who can podrace. Galen had no idea the Alliance would send only humans.

 

To be clear: it was specifically a conversation about comparing Luke to Rey.

I dunno, I think the narrative intent is pretty clear in the films, but it's clear your mileage varies and that's fine. We can come up with reasons why any given line doesn't actually mean what it seems to mean until the banthas come home, I just think canon is currently doing a really wonky job of dealing with this discrepancy.

 

My two cents on the "was the exhaust port weakness specifically Galen's plan?" issue: I think there's room for argument either way, but thematically it works way better if it wasn't. Rogue One is in part about showing all of these different elements and sacrifices adding up to secure the Alliance's victory in ANH; it works better if the discovery of how to beat the Death Star is part of a process set in motion by Galen as opposed to his masterplan from the beginning.

 

The thing is, I'm not entirely sure what else Galen's plan would be. The Rebels studied the plans and found no other way to get to the reactor other than the exhaust port. If the Rebels could initiate a destruct via computer hack, Galen would have already done it or ordered Bodhi Rook to do it or have him make someone else do it. He wouldn't risk others' lives for them to get another set of plans.

If it was supposed to be an infiltration team where a bunch of Rebels disguised as Imperial engineers went into the Death Star and fired a blaster at the reactor, that infiltration team would die.

Yes, Galen says "It’s well hidden and unstable, one blast to any part of it will destroy the entire station." But the fact of the matter is this is no different from any other reactor. If the Death Star's reactor is unstable, then so is the Trade Federation's and Death Star 2's. Anakin blew up the entire Trade Federation ship without even aiming his torpedoes correctly, and the reactor hit still took down the ship. I honestly don't think the screenwriters remembered that when they wrote Galen's line.

The fact of the matter is, the reactor being unstable is a Disney Canon thing (and I say this as someone who LOVES Rogue One and has seen it multiple times. It's the only Disney SW movie I like). That's why it doesn't line up with anything outside of exclusively Disney Canon stuff. We literally had almost 40 years of Star Wars fiction before the buyout, including all sorts of stories about Death Star 1 including an entire novel, and not one of them ever hinted at the reactor being unstable or different from any other Star Wars reactor (which also brings down the entire vessel when hit).

 

It seems clear that he didn't have one, he just helped in what way he could.

Rebel leadership, analyzing the plans with a superlaser staring them down, came up with the plan, not Galen.

 

Only one solution then - break out the lightsabers.

The dueling field is that way.

And hats are required dueling regalia.

 

It’s true Jedi need to wear more hats.

 

Indeed.

 

I'm honestly not understanding the need to make things more complicated. Why not use Occam's Razor? The Rebels found Galen's intended flaw (an exhaust port the RO novelization confirmed he installed).

Maybe Galen meant for an Imperial shuttle to "accidentally" drop a torpedo while on their way to pay homage to Tarkin or something. (Such a shot would also be WAY easier for the targeting computer to make as it doesn't have to account for enemy TIES and attacking turbolasers, and thus wouldn't require a Force sensitive person) Whatever. The fact of the matter is, it seems clear the exhaust port was Galen's flaw and an official source, the novelization, confirms this.

Dueling? Yeah, I'll break out my cortosis weapon, but I rather do things efficiently first.

"I want every weapon we have to fire on that man!"

And I'm not going to argue if @BobaMatt uses a Force projection. We all know how that ends.

And, um, "I know Vaapad!" (wow, I feel like in a Matrix movie written by Matthew Stover)

 

As has already been pointed out, Galen himself specifies what his flaw is in the film, which takes precedence over the novelization. So Occam's Razor favours that, not the book.

He's not suggesting any sort of tactic; he wants the Rebels to find the schematics to find a way to exploit his flaw. They do: via the exhaust port he installed.

 

What about rotj and tpm? Were those reactors sabotaged and unstable too? Because it seems that's what you're saying honestly.

By your wording, vader really killed anakin then since that's what obi wan said. Yoda was the jedi master who trained obi, not a. Vader wanted luke to have his lightsaber.

We have to take dialogue in context with onscreen evidence

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Indeed.

[/QUOTE]

Considering I'm just getting out of bed this Saturday afternoon, I think it's the only way I can manage.

Right. Also Occam's Razor would seem to dictate that if Galen's plan was for them to use the exhaust port...he would have just told them, instead of sending them to break into a Fort Knox/Pentagon hybrid.

Well, when it comes to TPM I think the best explanation is size. Can't find a size comparison between a Lucrehulk and the Death Star, but here's a comparison that includes a Lucrehulk and the Executor.

Spoiler

And here's the Executor impacting on the surface of the vast surface of the Death Star II.

Spoiler

The Death Stars are enormous.

We don't have an explanation for the Death Star II yet, but if I had to venture one, I'd say the Empire never figured out Galen's hairtrigger, assumed they just had to do away with exhaust ports, and hastily rebuilt more or less, just with no holes on the surface big enough for a proton torpedo this time.

 

Well, one would think that the first question everyone would be asking is why the whole structure blew up (if this was actually a rare occurrence and TPM was really a one time thing) instead of, say, a power outage, but fair enough.

If we're going to bring size into it, there's just no point of comparison really. Han Solo outright says the DS is too big to be a space station. Galen might believe that without his saboteur tinkering, a reactor powering a space station that size would survive a proton torpedo hit, but even he has no point of comparison and is basing this solely on his own mental calculations. And as a real life licensed engineer myself, I know how easily it is for those mental calculations to be wrong.

And like I said, it doesn't help that other reactors in Star Wars take down the whole ship when hit (as far as we've seen on screen).

By TFA, our heroes seem to take for granted that hitting even something other than a reactor (in this case an oscillator) will blow up the entire structure (instead of just destroying the hyperspace superlaser). No one, not even Snoke, was wondering why this seemingly rare occurrence was happening without engineering sabotage.

And Snoke had the First Order's top minds working for years to dig up any sabotage if they were basing Starkiller on the Death Stars.

 

Regarding the Death Star II, keep in mind that the only Imperial who actually knew Galen's reactor instability even existed was vaporized approximately one minute after learning that fact. Speaking as a real-life engineer in my own right (a quality assurance engineer for a computer company), I've seen plenty of scenarios where a.) there is a bug in a given system, b.) even the experts are unable to "root cause" said bug, and c.) the problem is "solved" by simply removing the triggering mechanism rather than actually fixing the bug. A scenario in which Imperial engineers never figured out why a single torpedo down the exhaust port blew up the station and "solved" the problem by removing the exhaust port rather than successfully stabilizing the reactor is all too plausible.

I have no idea why TPM is even being brought into the scenario - the reactor Anakin shot while aboard the Lucrehulk would be so different from the Death Star's in so many ways (size, function, design, power output, etc.) that claiming both would have followed the same pattern of behavior is absurd.

 

There's still the matter that Chief Bast calculated a danger though to the point he was going to evacuate Tarkin. If he thought the reactor was fine, he would think that even if the rebels shot a torpedo in it, nothing would happen.

Which indicates that reactors taking down stations upon hits are something Chief Bast expected, and not a result of Galen sabotage he wouldn't be aware of.

Also, if a reactor instability is copied over into DS2. Well, we're never told if the reactor shaft in Palpatine's throne room leads to the main one (the official SW site said it's a reactor shaft), but if the reactor were really so unstable, well wouldn't DS2 blow up upon him and his lightning hitting it? Rather bizarre, I know.

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Bast only stated there was an unspecified "danger" and suggested, with no apparent overabundance of urgency, that Tarkin's ship be placed on standby. Had his tactical analysis revealed the possibility that the Rebels could actually blow up the reactor and destroy the entire station in a single heartbeat... wouldn't Bast have said as much?

My own speculation -- and this is admittedly sheer speculation on my part -- is that the "danger" revealed by the analysis was that a torpedo targeting the exhaust port could damage the reactor and potentially compromise the station's defenses. No one suspected that a single torpedo could actually detonate the reactor and entirely obliterate the station.

 

Yeah, even before Rogue One it always seemed to me that what happens with Bast is that his people have figured out what the Rebels are even trying to do, and...yeah, there's a chance it could work. (Just readying Tarkin's shuttle would be useless if they suspected the station would instantaneously explode.) Even if Bast works out what's wrong with the reactor...he and his team and, presumably, all of their analyses are shortly thereafter kaboomed.

 

Telling Tarkin the truth would likely make matters worse. This is the guy who destroyed Scarif for nothing. Also, it is possible Tarkin's shuttle could escape the Death Star destruction, just barely. It'd likely be a jump directly to hyperspace thing the way Cassian Andor escaped Jedha's destruction.

Keep in mind that if reactor hits leading to complete destruction is so rare, you would think at Dodonna's briefing the naysayers (original Wedge, Han Solo, maybe even Biggs who had a full Academy education, and other veterans) would say "General Dodonna, even if we hit the reactor, it's highly unlikely to destroy the station and they can just repair it later after they orbitally bombard us". Han and original Wedge would not have been told about Galen.

And, if we want the real world answer to this, none of the many Star Wars writers, who pored over every second of the films for inconsistencies to fix (that's how we got the Ruusan reformation for example) ever thought the need to write in a reactor sabotage to explain DS's destruction. They were doing this before I and others on here were even born!

The reactor thing was only created to preserve continuity between Galen having a sabotage story arc and Dodonna's line about he and his people "finding" the exhaust port weakness in ANH.

I try to keep my logic "in-continuity", but at the end of the day saying the reactor weakness was always there is like trying to fit 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons rules into 1st edition and pretending that Thieves were always called Rogues--pretending that a reactor weakness was always part of the Star Wars story when any glance of over 40 years of Star Wars fiction, Lucas' drafts and notes and Alan Dean Foster's novelization and the radio dramas clearly indicates it's not.

And that's why the original works don't represent that--no character remarks on the oddity of a torpedo hit to the reactor leading to complete destruction, no one remarks on it again in ROTJ, etc.

It's jarring in the way Anakin now says "My powers have doubled since the last time we met Count" after TCW shows he dueled Dooku every other week. As much as I love TCW, I don't try to pretend that makes sense, so I'm not seeing why others are insisting the reactor thing does when it clearly is jarring the way Anakin's line in ROTS is (as well as Grievous and Kenobi's lines acting like they never fought before).

On that note, I have a feeling that the idea of Cassian Andor acting like he never disobeyed orders before in Rogue One is about to be shattered in his planned prequel show.

 

yah Cassian not making with the Erso murder is presented really as his first time going against his boss, he seems rather worn out by wetwork in R1, his speech about how they've all killed for the alliance (and him y'know murdering that guy at the start) does seem he did some dark stuff without question.

 

Obi Wan's statement was far vaguer though and easier to recon after the fact. Galen is very definite that he has built a flaw into the Deathstar's reactor.

In ROTJ you see the rebels directly attack the reactor and even then note that Wedge takes out the "power regulator" which I'd assume is some kind of emergency system that prevents an explosive failure.

 

Obviously what we need is Ken Jeong to babble off some made up nonsense about oscillators or whatever. Then Return of the Jedi will be the literalist masterpiece we deserve.

 

The explanations given here on DS2 exploding the same way as DS1 hinge on Galen's sabotage being copied over though.

Galen removing a power regulator from DS1's design also would be rather noticeable by Krennic, Tarkin, etc.

I know what Galen said in Rogue One. But at the end of the day, it just doesn't line up with what I've heard and seen in the other films regarding Death Stars. Admiral Piett insisting he sabotaged the Falcon makes no difference to Vader at the end of the day when he sees it jumping into hyperspace. On that same note, no one acted in either Death Star briefing that a hit to the reactor leading to complete destruction was an unusual occurrence.

The trend we've seen in 2 Death Stars is that it's normal for the station to explode once the reactor is hit.

To say it's suddenly abnormal is like saying that a warp core breach in Star Trek would NOT lead to the destruction of a Federation ship, and that this is the case on the show only because Scotty sabotaged the Enterprise's warp core to blow up the ship upon being hit, and this was copied over to every Starfleet ship.

Even if CBS creates an episode of Scotty saying he did this, any Trek fan would know how nonsensical such a scene would be.