To me--the convincing of the Mon Cals to join the rebells and give them something like a real fleet should have been a storyline for REBELS
Star Wars Rebels Season Three (spoilers)
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To me--the convincing of the Mon Cals to join the rebells and give them something like a real fleet should have been a storyline for REBELS
It could still be.
And yet somehow none of this is counted as a "major victory" against the Empire, according to the ANH opening scroll.
Taking out one small ship at a time in limited skirmishes and commando raids are minor victories.
Taking out two destroyers and an orbital platform at once while stealing the plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon is most assuredly a major victory. Well beyond anything the Alliance has ever achieved.
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That was no small ship they took out this week. It looked like a full-sized Star Destroyer to me.
Yeah, in the grand scheme of things, one Star Destroyer isn't going to make much of a difference for the rebellion. Material losses don't mean as much to the Imperial war machine as strategic losses. Indeed the trade-off here was pretty bad since it's made the job of finding the base that much easier for Thrawn. A net gain for the Empire, potentially.
Now, getting the means to stop the Empire vaporising whole planets, that's a big deal. That they also showed up the Imperial navy in the process is more of a bonus than anything.
Now, getting the means to stop the Empire vaporising whole planets, that's a big deal. That they also showed up the Imperial navy in the process is more of a bonus than anything.
Well, of course Scarif was a major victory. What's at issue is the idea that it's the first major victory, that nothing we've seen before is big enough to cross the line into "major." The question is, how big does something have to be before it qualifies as "major?" And answering "as big as Scarif" is circular logic.
I guess I'm approaching it from the standpoint of the question the makers of the show would have to face. That "first major victory" line poses a creative obstacle for them, because of course they want their characters to have successes, but remaining consistent with that line would require limiting those successes. So the question is, where do you draw the line? Do you decide going in that your heroes will never achieve victories above a certain low level, or do you just go ahead and start blowing up Star Destroyers and handwave it away by moving the goalposts of "major" after the fact?
On the other hand, there's something to be said for a more pessimistic approach where the protagonists' victories are always limited and outnumbered by their failures. Gilligan and co. never got off the island, Mulder never proved the aliens were real, etc. We have seen the Rebels endure some major defeats, like being driven from Lothal and losing Ahsoka to Vader. Kanan even lost his sight. And with Thrawn as the main villain, it seems like they may be setting the Rebels up to suffer another major loss at the end of this season. And many of their victories have been limited, like how they lost the hard evidence of the Empire poisoning Geonosis and had to settle for mere photos. So maybe they are trying to limit the characters' victories as a matter of course. Which makes it seem like overkill that Zeb was able to take out a whole Imperial warship in this week's episode.
Maybe having a list would help. I always like lists. But I'm not immersed enough in this show to be able to compile one myself. Can someone offer an accounting of just what victories the Rebellion has achieved over the course of Rebels so far? I can think of a few, like obtaining various kinds of ship for the fleet (including the Hammerheads that proved so useful at Scarif) and destroying various Imperial ships, but I don't remember them all.
It only seems you have the issue with it and no one else in this thread.
Where did the 'major victory' come from? I keep seeing references to it but the word 'major' is in no version of the crawl that I can find online.
It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.
During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.
Pursued by the Empire's sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy....
Oh, okay, then -- it's even worse than I thought. Clearly the characters on Rebels have won several victories against the Empire, some of them involving one or more spaceships. So that phrasing makes it even harder to reconcile.
Well, unless you take it really literally. The sentence refers specifically to spaceships striking from a hidden base -- in context, specifically the base on the moon of Yavin IV. So it could be taken to refer only to the first victory won by the Rebel fleet operating out of Yavin, rather than the first victory won by the Rebellion as a whole. Which leaves more flexibility for portraying Rebel victories in Rebels.
I swear if someone ever finds a way to weaponize Christopher's pedantry it could level whole continents.
Seriously mate. We know it's their first major victory because it says so right there in the opening crawl and as every schoolchild knows, only the God of Flying Space Letters is the ultimate arbiter on what constitutes a "major victory" as opposed to a "minor victory" or indeed a "highly significant and wholly notable, yet not as critical as a major victory". Question the judgement of the God of Flying Space Letters at your own peril!
This indeed raises the slight technicality that the Rebel Alliance doesn't actually exist yet and thus all those "minor victories" cannot in fact be credited to said non-existent organisation. How's that for pedantic?!
Seriously mate. We know it's their first major victory because it says so right there in the opening crawl and as every schoolchild knows, only the God of Flying Space Letters is the ultimate arbiter on what constitutes a "major victory" as opposed to a "minor victory" or indeed a "highly significant and wholly notable, yet not as critical as a major victory". Question the judgement of the God of Flying Space Letters at your own peril!
This indeed raises the slight technicality that the Rebel Alliance doesn't actually exist yet and thus all those "minor victories" cannot in fact be credited to said non-existent organisation. How's that for pedantic?!
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Heresy!As I pointed out though, it doesn't.
It's not pedantry, it's curiosity. Of course it's a given that the opening scroll says "first victory," but as I said, it's interesting to think about the question of how, or whether, the producers of Rebels need to negotiate around that.
This indeed raises the slight technicality that the Rebel Alliance doesn't actually exist yet and thus all those "minor victories" cannot in fact be credited to said non-existent organisation. How's that for pedantic?!
Well, as iamnotspock correctly pointed out, we've both misremembered the wording. It didn't say the first major victory of the Rebel Alliance, it said that "Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base" have won "their first victory." Which, depending on how literally you take it, could make it the rebels' first victory, or the first victory of the rebels from that particular base, or, heck, the first victory involving those specific spaceships.
By the way, I just watched the sequel to Rogue One, and I have to say, the animation on Tarkin and Leia is much more convincing...
By the way, while I was watching ANH, something occurred to me: Dantooine was a Rebel base that was abandoned sometime in the past. So it would be a natural location for Rebels to use. I wonder if we'll ever see it.