How long was Luke on Dagobah?

Hi folks.

I've seen a lot of speculation on this question. From a few days to a few months. Anybody got a canon or strong EU source/link on this question? Or if you could direct me to the existing thread on this topic. Thanks!

 

He left Hoth at the same time as Han and co. Han and co can't have been on Bespin all that long (I doubt Vader was waiting around for long). So I'd say less than a couple of weeks.

 

Agreed. The only issue I guess is how long did it take for the Falcon to limp to Bespin with a broken hyperdrive. I've seen estimates of anywhere from days to months. I've seen people say that Lucas said it took about a month, but I can't find that anywhere.

Thanks for the response!

 

Like so many aspects of the films which have been picked up on as questionable or flawed, this is something that never occured to me until other fans started raising it (not sure what that says about me!): in the few hours that it takes for The Falcon to make it from Hoth to Cloud City via the asteroid field, Luke receives training from Yoda and still has time to get to Bespin to try and rescue them. This question was from Empire magazine's unofficial (though quite brilliant) Star Wars DVD Viewing Companion.

The question presumes that it only takes The Falcon a few hours. Not being too clued up on timing issues in the Star Wars universe, I wouldn't know how long it took them to get from Hoth to Cloud City.

 

There is no way the Falcon made it to Bespin in a few hours. The maximum speed of anything in the universe without faster than light travel is 700 million MPH; now, we know that the SW people do have non-hyperdrive engines capable of traveling at almost that speed from the ROTJ novel, so presumably a guy like Han would have them for his ship. Now, there is no listed distance for Hoth to Bespin, but the nearest star (in our galaxy) is 4.3 light-years away; a single light year is equal to 5.88 million million miles. We are also told that Bespin is "pretty far", according to Han.

I'm not about to whip out the trusty calculator, but it's clear that the Hoth-Bespin trip at sublight speeds is not a few hours if the SW galaxy can be assumed to be at all like our own when it comes to spatial relationships.

 

The official answer as to how Han got to Bespin was that he used the backup hyperdrive, which is much slower and much less reliable than the main unit.

 

That makes sense. I think we really would have to abandon the laws of astrophysics when it comes to star wars. Assuming Bespin is the same distance to Alpha Centauri (or is it Proxima Centauri?) from us, with sub-light travel, it woul take years rather than even weeks by OUR rules.

I always figured it was about a month. Maybe 3-4 weeks that Luke was on Dagobah. Which I do like that idea better than a few days, cos imagining Luke learning all he needs to know in a few DAYS, that Jedi used to take YeARS to learn seems a lot more unrealistic to me. Weeks is still pretty short for that too, IMO, but it's way better than days. Plus, I know this is abit far fetched, but Han and the gang could have possibly made short stops along the way, too, trying to stay under the radar while doing it...

I vote for 4 weeks.

 

Welll....*goes out on a limb* what's wrong with it being years? It'd make Luke's sudden prowess no longer be a potential issue, and it's not like the war with the Rebellion would have ended in the meantime.

Not like decades or anything, but a year or at most two.

 

I will admit that does sound a bit farfetched, but I suppose.... ...if you think about what happens during that particular point in the film, (with all the characters,) it COULD make sense...especially if Han and the "gang" made discreet stops on the way to Bespin (which also could be possible.)

Of course, I'm sure that wasn't in any way the intention, but I could see a year working...Although I would've expected Luke to be a bit better as a Jedi if that had been the case...


I still cast my vote for 4 weeks...

 

I think it would be cool if it was a year or so, but I don't think it could have been. I just did a very quick google search for Star Wars time line and went to Wookieepedia, because I figured that would be the most reliable (didn't come across a timeline from the main site, but I'm sure there is one out there). All the events in ESB happen in the 3rd year after the Battle of Yavin and the first event listed in the 4th year is Han being rescued from Jabba. I have no idea how reliable that info is, could be totally inaccurate.

 

I think it's an issue of time-lapse physics or something of such a nature. I saw this question raised elsewhere and I can't remember the wonderful answer I read, but I don't find it strange that space travel may induce a kind of "warp" in time. And I'm sure that the galaxy's timekeepers were built with that in mind if that is the case. Or I could be proposing a science-of-the-gaps approach, I don't know.

 

Didn't the Official Fact File have a map of the galaxy in it and a breakdown of how long it takes to travel in hyperspace?

Not that it matters - the appeal of Star Wars was never in its plausibility.

 

I generally interpret it to be between 2 or 3 months that Luke is on Dagobah, and that the Falcon is going to Bespin.

 

I always find that most of the perceived flaws can be easily explained away. This is one of them.

 

Maybe there alot cut scenes that show More Luke in training with Yoda and other cut scenes. Even the prequels had alot of cut scenes that never made it to become delated scenes.

Anyways I would say about a month luke spent on dagabah but it only feels like two or three days threw the movie.

 

6 weeks. It took 6 weeks. This has been the official answer from LFL for at least 15 years now. Go look it up. StarWars.com, Wookiepedia, The Official Star Wars Encyclopedia,,,

 

Although I would've expected Luke to be a bit better as a Jedi if that had been the case...


Just to point out-the kid could hardly TK his sabre from like a foot away at the start of the movie without rolling his eyes into the back of his head. His skills improve alot on Dagobah...not enough to stand toe to toe with Vader, but he's certainly a much more capable opponent..the last guy to do any physical harm to Vader was Obi-Wan 22 years prior, after all.

 

Its all a matter of light-speed. How fast is it really? I believe Luke was training with Yoda for at least a few months.. Seems strange maybe, but the movies shows us only the most important moments. Luke probably spend a lot of time on Dagobah. Han and the others used a lot of time space traveling i believe..

 

This.

 

I totally buy into backup hyperdrives. Why take a chance being starnded between stars? You can allow for Luke to be on Dagobah for a greater length of time as the Falcon can probably go fast enough for time dilation to take effect, but the timeline of months or years between films would not add up.

 

If the Falcon used a backup hyperdrive that only sometimes worked, there could be *some* relativistic effects due to sub-light travel, but enough FTL travel could have occurred to get to Bespin without taking decades caused by time-dilation. I think that would neatly solve the problem...

 

Like the last two movies of the LOTR Trilogy, I suspect that the time span between the Battle of Hoth and the rescue of Han on Tatooine has always been presented in a flawed manner . . . especially in regard to the events that happened during that time span - the Falcon's journey to Bespin, Luke's training on Dagobah and his ability to effectively use the Force at Jabba's palace.

 

It's weird because the time periods on Dagobah and Cloud City/space could be different. So for the weeks it could have been on Cloud City, could have been months on Dagobah.
I mean Luke did learn a lot, he couldn't have just went up against Darth Vader without a lot of training under his belt.

 

I'm not entirely certain we can expect physics in the Star Wars galaxy to reliably adhere to the same physics here in the real world. Case in point? Star Wars' portrayal of asteroid belts is markedly different than the situation in the real world. In Star Wars, an asteroid belt is a deadly navigational hazard, with hundreds to thousands of giant floating rocks in all shapes and sizes floating around in your immediate field of view.

In the real world, though? It's my understanding that real-life asteroid belts (such as the one in our own home solar system) have their asteroids interspersed with incredible distances (many thousands of miles) between each individual asteroid; they're so far apart that if you're right by one asteroid, the rest in the belt might be so far away they might not even appear as tiny blips of reflected sunlight in space. They aren't really that big a navigational hazard- there's PLENTY of space to maneuver around in real-life asteroid belts.

Heck, as wide an area as the asteroid belt covers, its total mass is about 4% of our own moon, Luna, with half of the mass in the asteroid belt occupied by 2 Pallas, 4 Vesta, 10 Hygia, and Ceres- in fact, Ceres, the asteroid belt's sole dwarf planet, accounts for almost a third of the asteroid belt's mass all by itself! Real-life asteroid belts are almost startlingly empty when compared with the jam-packed deathtraps you see in Star Wars.

So I don't really mind the backup hyperdrive/subspace travel debate. Star Wars is equal parts fantasy and science, so expecting it to absolutely adhere to the known laws of physics in one part of The Empire Strikes Back when it demonstrably differs from reality in other parts of the film just seems like looking for a scientific explanation when the real explanation is a LOT more obvious: it's just a movie.

 

Or it simply could have been a case of errors on the writers' part.