CT "The Empire Strikes Back" Timeline

When I drive over a hundred miles I need help getting out of the car.

 

I agree. Traveling in hyperspace has nothing to do with traveling at the speed of light in NORMAL space. That's why they call it "hyperspace". It's not real space and may even be a higher dimension (or some kind of wormhole?). As I have written elsewhere, and you mentioned in your post, traveling 1.5 lightspeed in real space wouldn't get you anywhere fast. So leaving real space to travel is the only solution. I don't think any pilot, at least in the PT to ST era, would have to spend more than a few hours in his fighter.

 

Has this been verified?

This is what I have always wondered since I first saw "The Empire Strikes Back". How long did Luke's training last on Dagobah? How long did it take the Falcon to travel from the Hoth system to Bespin?

 

I think when they arrive it's a different day to when Lando invites them to dine with him, Leia has changed and is now very concerned about Threepio, a lot more concerned than if it had only been a few hours. Also Han says "The ship is almost finished. Two or three more things and we're in great shape", they don't just repair the Falcon in an hour or two, I've always felt that there was jump between these two scenes.

And who is to say time passes equally in all these different locations, a week on Dagobah could equate to a day on Cloud City.

 

Check out the movie. Do you see any nighttime exterior shots of Cloud City? I didn’t see any. What we see on screen is one day from sunrise to sunset in order.

 

On the other hand, do you see any daytime scenes in Blade Runner, except for that one morning when Deckard visits Tyrell at the beginning? Not everything has to be shown in a movie. And surely the entire plot in BR doesn't take place during just one night?
Or Sin City? It's always night.

 

I must admit, I always assumed that the Falcon arrives at dusk, then we see some broad daylight, and then dusk again. It didn't occur to me that it was the sun rising during those beautiful scenes when our heroes arrive. Man, those scenes are so lovely. The harps and choral music too.

 

Me as well. It’s the last time I watched Empire that I noticed the one day of events and the rising sun. Also noticed Han and Leia are in more of a waiting room area than in personal quarters when Chewie shows up with C-3PO and Lando invites them to a meal.

 

It's funny that you should describe it as a waiting room, because that's how it makes me feel. Like the waiting room outside the principal's office, or the dentist. Anywhere that you have to nervously wait because something bad is about to go down.

 

I was trying to think about what Han and Leia were doing while Luke was training for weeks. The only explanation would be the broken hyperdrive. Another option is that they spent a long time inside the worm but I don't think that was more than a few hours.

I'll guesstimate and say....

Day 1: Both Luke and the Falcon leave Hoth.
Day 1: Luke arrives at Degobah within a few hours because he has a working hyperdrive.
Day 1: Han and Leia are getting chased into the asteroid field and end up inside a worm.
Day 1-2: Han and Leia escape the worm and decide to head towards Bespin.
Day 3-21 or so: Han and Leia travel to Bespin - long journey with no hyperdrive
Day 22: Han and Leia arrive at Bespin
Day 22: Luke senses that they are in trouble and hyperdives it to Bespin arriving later in the day.

 

That was my assumption as well.

 

It's interesting that more of you are concerned by the timeline following the Falcon's arrival on Bespin than you are on how long it took the Falcon to reach there in the first place or how long was Luke's Jedi training on Dagobah.

 

I always thought the Bespin stuff all happened within the same day. I get the sense that Luke/Leia arrived earlier in the day and Luke arrived at 6-7pm - ish.

As for travel time / Luke training time I see it as a minimum of 2 days (we know Luke spends at least one night in Degobah) and a maximum of 6 weeks (what Hamill said). Any number between those timings still makes sense to me. In my made up timeline I put 3 weeks which falls somewhere in the middle.

If the Falcon could make "0.5 past light speed" without hyperdrive then Bespin must have been in the same solar system as Hoth but according to Canon sources it wasn't. The retcon explanation is that there was some slower backup hyperdrive but there's no information about how fast it is so it's still completely unknown how long it took to get from Hoth to Bespin.

 

This has always been an issue for me. I found myself wondering how long it took the Falcon to reach Bespin, considering its journey more or less lasted close to the same amount of time as Luke's Jedi training.

 

OK I think I found the official answer.

The recently published Star Wars title pretty much confirms that Yoda trained Luke more extensively than the movie’s runtime could grant and as ScreeRant notes, he was there for roughly a month. Obi-Wan even remarks to himself that he has had to “facilitate a group therapy session” between the two of them on several occasions, meaning that he certainly spent considerable time on Dagobah.
https://wegotthiscovered.com/movies/star-wars-finally-reveals-long-luke-skywalker-dagobah/

Luke was on Degobah for about a month. That also means that it took the Falcon about a month to go from Hoth to Degobah.

 

Finally . . . after so many years, I learn the truth. Thank you. Sincerely.

 

I like all of this. I think the best answer is the 2 day to 6 weeks answer. Anything in that range can work.

I guess Bespin isn’t just the closest planet to Hoth. It’s the nearest place that could be safe for the Falcon to get repairs.

As getting to Cloud City means the end of Leia and Han’s journey. It’s the end of their break from typical responsibilities. End if there time alone. Once the hyper drive is fixed they’d be hours from being back to the rebellion. I don’t think I recognized what reaching bespin meant.

 

Leia and Han seemed like a much better balanced couple when they arrived at Bespin. I wonder if their romance would seem less problematic if we'd had some glimpses of how their relationship developed during the journey. But it's unfortunately rare to see healthy happy couples on screen; writers and directors always seem to think it's more interesting to show us struggling or toxic relationship drama. I wonder if there's any fanfiction about the journey to Bespin.

 

Han definitely seemed to change when they arrived at Cloud City.

 

So now that we pretty much know the timeline we know that Han, Leia, Chewbacca, and C3-P0 spent a month together in relatively close quarters. Time enough for Han and Leia to develop a romantic relationship and time enough for Chewbacca to generally care about C3-P0 when he was blown apart. Since we now known that Luke trained with Yoda for "about a month" I'll revise my timeline:

Day 1: Both Luke and the Falcon leave Hoth. The Falcon leaves first as Luke sees it flying away.
Day 1: Luke arrives at Degobah within a few hours because he has a working hyperdrive.
Day 1: Han and Leia are getting chased into the asteroid field and end up inside a worm.
Day 1-2: Han and Leia escape the worm and decide to head towards Bespin.
Day 1-31 or so: Luke spends significant time training with Yoda. Obi-Wan shows up several times (according to the new-ish book).
Day 2-31 or so: Han and Leia travel to Bespin - long journey with no hyperdrive. During this time Han, Leia, Chewbacca, and C3-P0 live in close quarters.
Day 31: Han and Leia arrive at Bespin in the early to mid part of the day
Day 31: Luke senses that they are in trouble and hyperdives it to Bespin arriving later in the day.

 

This is how I've always assumed the timeline. I just figured the Falcon's travel time from the Anoat system to Bespin was about 2-3 weeks. The concept of the Falcon not being able to go to lightspeed really makes that plausible-and the way Yoda is with Luke throughout his time on Dagobah make it clear he was with Yoda for some time-several days at the very least.

With all this talk about time passing during travel, I fully acknowledge that hyperspace travel is really fast-TROS basically made this obvious the most. But I also am of the belief that we shouldn't always assume that what we see play out onscreen is all that really transpires. I've always acknowledged the possibility there could be any stretch of time-and even events-which occur offscreen. The comparison between the book and the films of LOTR could be good examples of this idea.

 

I think it’s because they know their time together is almost over. They realize they really like each other. All the fighting and flirting gave way to actual real and deep emotions for one another. They are already sad it’s over and missing it. So they might not have had a change of behavior on the Falcon. It’s that the journey is almost over that causes the change when they arrive at Cloud City.

 

I doubt Hoth and Bespin are in the same solar system. That would have been lazy and just too much of a coincidence. Somebody would have said "Oh, we are still in the Hoth system, so let's just go to Bespin." According to Wookiee Hoth is in the Hoth system while Bespin in the Bespin system. Even if they were neighboring systems, at 1.5 lightspeed it would still take the Falcon years to get there. If our galaxy has any relevance at all, then we can compare the distance to our neighboring solar system, Proxima Centauri, which is still over 4 lightyears away. At a speed of 1.5 lightspeed it would still take the Falcon just under 3 years to get there.
So an emergency hyperdrive is the only thing that makes sense.

 

Well normal space does seem to impact Hyperspace somewhat. Han mentions that if they fly into a star or bounce too close to a super nova that would end their trip really quick.
I think some EU said something about gravity well of large objects affecting hyperspace but I could be wrong.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

I've always assumed that the answer is one of 2 things:

- The Falcon hitched a ride through hyperspace on that ISD

OR

- Bespin's star and Hoth's star are a binary pair


But yeah - I mean we are talking about a space wizard movie