I liked the Incom story. I took the beat up look of the X-wings as that the Rebels ride them hard and don't have the means or time to keep them clean on backwater bases and get that worn look by just the number of hours they use them. Figured the new built ones would only look new for a few weeks to a month before looked about as worn as the rest of them. The Y-wings always looked stripped down. The X-wings didn't.
They've kind of established the A-wing as the Rebels' mainstay fighter in "Rebels," which actually makes a certain amount of sense. It's small, portable, easy to build, and fast as hell; all of these are characteristics you'd want in a fighter used by a guerilla force that prefers to avoid direct engagement. The Y-wings are explicitly given as relics from the Clone Wars; they're apparently being salvaged from scrap yards, and there are a lot of them still around because the Republic built a shit ton of them before the war's end. This sort of implies that the X-wing might also be an older design, maybe an immediate successor to the Headhunter, that would have been developed by the Republic and entered mass production just in time to miss the end of the Clone Wars. Certainly the longevity of the basic design suggests it is seen as something of the ultimate manifestation of the Republic's heavy fighters. OTOH, the B-wing is implied to be a brand new design developed by a mad genius that the Rebels are having commissioned for them in secret, so the same could easily be true of the X-wing. Either way, it's clearly somewhere in the lineage of the Headhunter, so it could be either or both of those origins. The beat up and surprisingly rugged design of the X-wings (seriously: how do you crash your ship and sink it in a swamp and still have it be flyable again???) suggest it's probably a very old design after all, but that's just me. They kind of did to me, but that was only in comparison to the Tie fighters and the imperial shuttles; I got the impression that a "normal" star fighter was supposed to be small and compact and the Rebels' mainstay fighters were only as large as they were because they were relatively crude designs built by a more primitive industry that couldn't achieve the ridiculously high power densities the Tie fighters were getting. OTOH, I'm also the jackass who kept insisting for YEARS that tie fighters had deflector shields at least as powerful as the X-wings (because their design makes NO FUCKING SENSE otherwise) so your mileage may vary. Point of comparison: the X-wing definitely looks less "complete" of a design than the Arc-170 or the Headhunter. Like most people, I could see the X-wing being an immediate predecessor of one or both of these designs: maybe an attempt to combine the agility of the headhunter with the firepower of the Arc-170?
Not exactly. All we know is that the A-Wing was used by one, possibly two rebel cells sponsored by Bail prior to the formation on the Alliance. We have no information on what kind of starfighters any of the other groups were using (if anything.) For all we know Dodanna's cell has been using X-Wings right from the get-go and we just haven't seen them yet. I doubt it, but it's not impossible. For the sake of clarity, here's pretty much the sum total of relevant canon information on the subject from the 'Rogue One Ultimate Guide' book. The one on the left is obviously from the U-Wing page, while the one on the right is in reference to the X-wing. The full story of Incom hasn't been told yet so we don't know when Incom was nationalised or exactly when the X-Wing designs were shelved, nor indeed when the rebels acquired them. All we know is that as per the 'Ahsoka' novel, some model of TIE was already in Imperial service as early as 1 year after RotS, so it seems likely that Sienar had already won out by then. There's also no reason to conflate the two instances as they could have occurred years or even decades apart. Either way there's no mention here of direct collusion or defections, just that Bail managed to get his hands of a shipment of gunships though nefarious means. I'm assuming the bit about the civilian version being less scarce is mostly just a bit of foresight on the part of Pablo, on the off chance someone else wants to use the design in the future or some VFX artist sticks one in the background of some shot. I think it would have been a bit weird to have X-Wings to show up in the prequels given how iconic they are in relation to the OT. From a thematic perspective it wouldn't make sense either since Lucas was showing a period of cultural transition from the bespoke, craftsman like engineering designs like the N-1 and the J-327 and the more industrialised, utilitarian mass produced designs of the Empire. The only place they really could have showed up was in RotS and that's where we got the ARC-170s, which are clearly meant to be a definite nod in that direction, but evoking more of a WWII type of aesthetic. P.S. You know having said all that, *technically* a single X-Wing does actually appear in AotC...
Not unless one also explains how E.T.'s family wound up in the Republic Senate, how images of Artoo & Threepio showed up in the lost city of Tanis or why a Star Destroyer was struck by a very large kitchen sink during the Battle of Coruscant.
Leia was more qualified than Rieekan to command Echo Base? You know, when I read comments like this, I cannot help but wonder if anyone wants to question the writing in "The Empire Strikes Back". Is it really that important to regard it as flawless? The 1980 movie is one of my top two favorite SW flicks in the entire franchise. But there are aspects of it that I find questionable. I cannot pretend that either this movie or any other film in the franchise is flawless. And as much as I defend the PT (I find the criticisms of the trilogy rather heavy-handed), there are aspects of it that I find questionable. I've made this clear in my reviews for all eight films. But I cannot pretend that "TESB" is flawless. And I believe that the reason behind Leia's presence on Hoth is one of those flaws.
Who said it was flawless? That said, I find the idea that it was flawed specifically because of some miniscule detail about a nothing character's rank or position to be quite funny.
You know, this thread probably qualifies as the most in-depth discussion about Rieekan I've ever had, or even the only time outside of watching the film I've even thought of him. How the hell is Rieekan even pronounced anyway?
Indeed. Nothing about ESB is flawless, and it goes on the bottom of my list as far as OT watchability. That said, the nuance of Echo Base's command structure is not going to stretch my suspension of disbelief more than the laser swords, magical powers or giant space stations.
IIRC, in the EU he was in a secret Imperial POW camp on Courscant. Not sure if he was captured before or after tESB though. As for canon: it's possible he was with the fleet I suppose. I don't think it's been addressed yet.