CT "He was armed only with this"

When Luke Skywalker surrendered to Darth Vader in Episode VI, he was introduced to his father by an officer who said "He was armed only with this" (he was obviously referring to his lightsaber).

Based on his tone, the officer doesn't seem to care about the Jedi weapon that much, as if it were nothing special. At least that has always been my impression. He wasn't acting as if he's just got a Jedi Knight, but he seems to believe to have captured just a random rebel.

Could it be that he wasn't able to recognise a lightsaber?

 

I'd say most likely this. Jedi had not been around for some time, and the officer definitely looked like he was likely very young around the time of Order 66. Given that it's likely Palpatine made knowledge of the Jedi a taboo subject, it's quite possible that not many would know what a lightsaber is

As for what he could have thought the weapon's use was, no idea

 

"He was armed only with this" - could have been followed by:

"It's like the one on your belt Lord Vader"
"Didn't you fight someone with one of these on the first Death Star just before it got blown up?"

 

I'm pretty sure the officer knows what it is. It's a tube with a button on it that look like the thing Darth Vader occasionally uses to murder people, and I have to imagine the Empire educates their officers to recognize the signature weapon of a group of people classified as enemies of the state and actively hunted down. I mean, the way he says it doesn't indicate confusion to me. "Only withthis" has some emphasis on it, like the whole subphrase and particularly that last word are supposed to be a dramatic beat. I'm not surprised he doesn't say something alone the lines of, "He was carrying this lightsaber, the weapon of a Jedi. Lord Vader, I can only surmise that this means the prisoner himself is a Jedi." There's no point, we already have all that information. And it's like he's going to lose his composure and start flipping out, "Lord Vader, you won't believe what he was carrying! A lightsaber! I caught me a Jedi! Does this mean I get a raise?" Just that he says "armed" means he knows it's a weapon, and I doubt he thinks it's a weirdly shaped blaster.

 

It could also be that Imperial officers in general are conditioned to hold a certain level of contempt towards the Jedi. So now that one has been captured and his weapon seized, the officer simply did not give him or it any respect.

It would be like a group of soldiers capturing a terrorist, bringing him in, and one of them handing over his assault rifle and saying the same thing. It's not a matter of not realizing the kind of weapon the fighter had, but rather just not giving that fighter any credit or respect for carrying it.

 

Maybe the officer was just being formal.

 

RETURN of the Jedi.

Jabbas assistant, "...he's no Jedi."

It's more about Luke confronting the Empire as a Jedi, saving Vader...

 

In Legends the Empire bans ownership of a LS. I'm sure the officer knew that it was a LS.

 

If he didn't know what it was than that explains why he just handed it to Vader like he did but if he did indeed know what it was, maybe he wanted to impress his boss by just handing it over and cutting the chatter about it.

 

I think that's the most likely answer. No hysterics, no questions as to the implications of why Luke has one, that wasn't his place. He was simply reporting to Vader.

As for whether he mightn't have known what it was - he said Luke was 'armed' with it, so he knew it was a weapon. There is also the possibility that energy-bladed weapons weren't entirely unheard of - in the SW novel, Obi-Wan even says to Luke that lighsabers were still used "in certain galactic quarters", even though the Jedi were extinct. In the hands of someone without Force training, a lightsaber wouldn't really be much use against a blaster, so they might simply have been considered a bit pointless.

 

That's true. Supreme Commander of the Imperial Fleet Darth Vader, the Inquisitors, the Emperor's Hands, etc. were the only beings authorized to carry lightsabers. All Forece-sensitives were targets in the Great Jedi Purge, not only Jedi.

 

That said - lightfoils remained pretty popular with the nobles of the Tapani sector:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Lightfoil

and the Tyian Adepts were one of the few Force-sensitive non-Imperial organisations permitted to operate openly - possibly because of their extreme pacifism.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Revwien

 

Impressive. I forgot about the latter. I didn't know the former.

 

Lightfoils r kewl

 

It is possible that he was aware that lightsabers were an illegal weapon, therefore making it rare. It's like finding a terrorist (which the rebels were) with illegal items. Kinda important, but not super important. Maybe he didn't know that lightsabers were the weapons of a force user.