Palpatine seems to have taken a lot of risks with his kidnap gambit. First, there's a chance of Dooku betraying him before Anakin delivers the final blow. Any random battle droid might have ignored orders and shot the defenceless Chancellor. And the worst part, when Grievous shatters the viewport and launches all the escape pods, Palpatine is trapped on a crashing ship. If Anakin hadn't landed the Invisible Hand intact, the Sith threat would have ended that day. Did Sidious foresee that all would go according to plan or did he just have faith in Anakin Skywalker to keep him alive?
I'm sure Jello will be along shortly to dispel your doubts about HIMS' ability to control such situations, o ye of little faith!
We always knew he was overconfident; he probably figured a Dark Lord of the Sith would never die in such lame or anticlimactic ways. Call it a kind of plot-sensitive fatalism; it kind of reminds me of Kreia, in that sense.
As one wise man once said, "Oh so Palpatine's mind controlling everybody, including the Jedi, Yoda, Dooku, General Grevious, and little Annie."
Considering that most of his opponents were droids - and their leader was a cyborg - somehow I think he would've made sure that they had "special programming" to stop them from killing him. Dooku certainly would've been going along up until the end. The only real danger was probably from the ship crashing. Ultimately, if it came down to it, he always had his Force powers as a last resort.
Some good points, but we have to remember, in the end he is many times more capable than anyone else in the room until Yoda comes to visit. The biggest danger to Palpatine on the ship was Dooku outing him to Anakin, but thankfully for the first time Dooku was speechless. If he had needed to he could have burst out of his manacles at a split seconds notice, and fried anything in the room with lightning, or slipped his lightsaber down his sleeve. If we venture into his EU powers, he could perhaps have put the ship down with the force. If we go by just the films, yeah, I guess we have to assume he knew Anakin could land it or was taking a risk. I would go with the idea that he had everything under control except when Grevious did his thing, and after that it was just a case of waiting to see where things would go. Taking over the galaxy is hardly the safest gambit, after all.
Yes, Palpatine could have saved himself on the Invisible Hand if he had to. But revealing his Force powers at that point(and in front of Obi-Wan!) would mess with his plans. Unless he had a way of doing it subtly...
Yes, Palpatine was in actual danger at several points during the whole sequence. He's manipulating events, not actively controlling everything that happens. Despite this, thanks to his foresight, he sees himself surviving the whole incident and returning to Coruscant in triumph, and as a result is never really worried. Then again, he's never really worried on the Death Star II in Return of the Jedi, so he's far from infallible. Grievous' plan to crash the Invisible Hand is surely the moment of greatest danger though. Palpatine has contingency plans to escape on his own if the Jedi rescue fails or to reconfigure the war effort if Dooku somehow defeats Anakin and Obi-wan. If the ship turns into a giant fireball in the upper atmosphere of Coruscant though he's just as dead as anybody else.
I think he merely trusted in how powerful Anakin was and knew he would do anything to save one of his loved ones. Anakin WAS going to get him back safely, no matter what it took.
I think it's a mixture of this and playing a risky game. He saw what he could gain from this gambit and took it. Risks are part of the game. We see this again when he duels Yoda. There he's also fighting for his life but confident of ultimately being the winner and so cackles like a man with a straight flush and a million in the pot.
well yeah but worse case there for Palps is he has to hold out until security arrives so a lot less of a gamble.
Look at it like the events of the 2nd Death Star, when Luke summoned his lightsaber and took a swing at Palpatine, but Vader jumped in the way. Palpatine was in actual danger there, because Vader could have chosen no to or just been too slow in acting. On the Invisible Hand, Dooku could've betrayed Palpatine, or the Republic could've been quicker and accidentally blown the entire ship up, etc. Later Palpatine takes another risk when he reveals his true identity to Anakin. I think in every case of him taking a risk it's a calculated one that he plans out to the smallest detail possible, and then trusts in the Force and his own visions/foresight. Big risk, big reward.
That is an excellent point, I 'd forgotten about that nugget from DP. In fact, I wouldn't put it past Palpatine to have familiarized himself with the Invisible Hand's controls, just in case. He did have contingency plans for nearly every scenario. Thanks for all your awesome feedback guys.
As for the droids being a risk to Palpatine, I imagine Grievous would've been instructed by Dooku to ensure that the Chancellor was kept from harm, and all the droids aboard the ship mayhaps have had a standing order to not attack Palpatine.
