I have a feeling another one was already in the planning stages.
Rogue One questions
- Thread starter Mr. Laser Beam
- Start date
Possibly. Possibly not. We saw in RotS it only took what? 2-3 years for the first one to go from a set of plans to a seemingly complete superstructure, and that's *in secret* with just the resources of one planet and presumably several interruptions of the multiple Republic invasions and occupations. With the full weight and resources of the Empire thrown behind it, and now they actually know how to make one work right off the bat; I can see them getting a 60-ish percent complete one online and operational in the 4 years between ANH & RotJ.
On the other hand, I can also see Palpatine always intending to have at least two for redundancy and to guard against Tarkin getting any funny ideas. It's still all rather up in the air I think.
Indeed, in the NPR adaptation of A New Hope, Tarkin and Admiral Motti did have some funny ideas about how command of the Death Star made Tarkin Palpatine's equal, at the very least.
Yeah, I don't care how loyal he thinks Tarkin is, the Death Star gives him the ability to waltz over and blow up the Palace whenever he wants, and a bunch of Star Destroyers wouldn't be able to stop him. And neither could Palpatine, using the force. (It's not like how could take out an entire fleet with force lightning, that would just be stupid, right, right?). Theoretically he could force choke him from the planet but he'd have to have foreseen him coming.
That's more my thinking is that Palpatine would want a second one fully operational as soon as possible. Diverting resources for the first one only made sense up until the weapon was needed and then they had to wait to solve the weapon functioning problem. Once done the rest of the pieces could fall in to place. And Palpatine could direct another moff to start the project without worrying about Senate oversight.
I just don't see Palpatine waiting around for it.
Everything goes as Palpatine foresees.
Even dying. He definitely foresaw dying. Twice.
The Legends novel Death Star does have Tarkin speculating about using the Death Star to destroy Coruscant, an idea he quickly dismisses beleiving Palpatine must have included some sort of failsafe to prevent exactly that.
In the new canon, the Death Star started preliminary construction (in secret) under the Republic after Dooku gave the plans to Sidious. Palpatine lied to several republic officials that the Separatists were building their own super weapon to in order to secure the secrete funding to start it.
The Geonosians had not figured out how to get the main weapon to actually work before giving the plans to Dooku, hence why it took so long for the Empire to get it working, and Galen's role in all that.
I'm not sure how many years after ROTS that epilogue scene is meant to take place but yeah.
The Geonosians had not figured out how to get the main weapon to actually work before giving the plans to Dooku, hence why it took so long for the Empire to get it working, and Galen's role in all that.
I'm not sure how many years after ROTS that epilogue scene is meant to take place but yeah.
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I always took the epilogue to be shortly after the final events of ROTS. Is it not supposed to be?
Well, they're still riding a Venator rather than a Victory, with V-wing fighters for escort. Surely at least the Emperor would insist on more modern hardware if it were already available.
So, time enough for the new and depressing grey paint to dry on the Venator, and for sufficiently many grey uniforms to be made, and for clones and alien scum to be given the boot. But not much more than that.
Timo Saloniemi
So, time enough for the new and depressing grey paint to dry on the Venator, and for sufficiently many grey uniforms to be made, and for clones and alien scum to be given the boot. But not much more than that.
Timo Saloniemi
It's ambiguous, but it's probably somewhere in the few weeks to months range. For one thing Vader has his classic black & silver lightsaber (not visible in the film IIRC, but seen in a bunch of promotional material, so Hayden was probably wearing it) so it's not like he literally just walked out of the med facility straight to pose foreshadowingly at Palpy's new toy-in-progress.
The Victory was a EU invention anyways, so the chances of George using it would have been slim to none. It would have been more likely to be a plain old Imperial class if he wanted to use something other than a Venator.
Plus the Victory was already in service during the late Clone Wars, it was serving along side Venators in legends.
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Okay, an Imperial, then, if the intent was to show Deep Empire Era. And classic TIEs. You definitely need a TIE to a party like that.
Didn't our Rebels heroes deduce that something big had been constructed above Geonosis, but then presumably towed away, as the planet at the end of RotS doesn't look at all Geonosish? What is the exact timetable of that?
Timo Saloniemi
Didn't our Rebels heroes deduce that something big had been constructed above Geonosis, but then presumably towed away, as the planet at the end of RotS doesn't look at all Geonosish? What is the exact timetable of that?
Timo Saloniemi
There was no visible planet in that epilogue scene.
If the epilogue montage was meant to take place at the same time, then the scene of the would have to be almost immediately after the end of the movie. The Vader and Palpatine scene on the bridge is before all the other clips.
From what I can find in my research, the Death Star was moved from Geonosis around 3-4 years before ANH, so it would have been mostly complete by then, not in the state seen in ROTS.
There's no exact date, just some time between Saw's attack on Kyber crystal shipment seen in Rebels, and the Rebels episode where they go to Geonosis.
IIRC the DS1's main structure was complete several years before ANH, it was just the super laser they had trouble with.
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I imagine they relocated where they were building the station at some point (or multiple points if Senators were getting to nosy about specific planets). Once the station's hyperdrive was functional, they could move it (it would be a pain to try to tow that thing into hyperspace). I seem to recall that the station was more or less complete around the time of Solo, but the superlaser delay was huge on getting it completed.
I mean, I imagine that moving it from system to system could prevent too many prying eyes, possibly. But, I also wonder if they move systems to utilize raw materials available.
IIRC from the Thrawn novel it's implied that it's mostly moved around to hide the supply chain rather than the thing itself. Which has a logic to it since it's a big galaxy, and all they need to do to guarantee nobody stumbles across it is pick some random nowhere uninhabited system WAY off any hyperlanes or even smuggling routes and just park it around some non-descript planet; but since all of those resources flowing to one location for *decades* would be rather impossible to disguise, it makes more sense to keep moving it and by extension the never ending convoys of personnel and material from sector to sector.
They wiped out nearly the entire population of Geonosis once their usefulness was up. To keep word of it from spreading.
There were a few survivors, Vader killed a queen in a comic that started making droids that resembled Geonosians because she couldn't lay eggs.
There were a few survivors, Vader killed a queen in a comic that started making droids that resembled Geonosians because she couldn't lay eggs.
Now, we know the superlaser has been miniaturized past even what was seen in the (now non-canon) Eclipse. So if the same tech were used on a First Order era Death Star…would it now have Star Killer Bases reach without the size? Divvy that world up among five DS models with each having a few of the larger Star Destroyers. Spread everything out before you show your hand
Was the Starkiller Base weapon a superlaser, merely a very big and star-charging one? Or something all-new? The visuals were quite drastically different, as was the nature of delivery. Superlasers never went interstellar, or MIRVed at the destination... And the technobabble in TFA was on the light side, especially as regarded the dark side, har har: what Wookieepedia has to say on the matter is derived from offscreen sources.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
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