Where was Death Star inconsistent with the movie?
Damn, I was afraid someone might ask that.
It's been a while since I read it so I can't give a complete answer. There weren't any that I considered major.
I recall some of the movie dialog being incorrect, a minor point but one that shouldn't have fallen through the cracks, since it would have been easy enough to fix. Another minor point is that, IIRC, it forgot to mention that not only did two X-Wings survive the climactic battle, but also one Y-Wing did as well (it forgot the Y-Wing).
I thought I'd take a few minutes to report that I've checked and confirmed that my memory was correct about these minor errors in
Death Star by Michael Reaves and Steve Perry. Details from the hardcover first edition are as follows.
1. One example of book dialog not matching up exactly with film dialog is in the following line on page 330.
Death Star by Reaves and Perry said:
“We count thirty Rebel ships, Lord Vader. But they're so small, they're avoiding our turbolasers.”
Instead of "avoiding", the word in the film is "evading". I wonder whether someone transcribed the line from the film and simply had trouble with the officer's accent. According to other EU material, this line was spoken by
Lieutenant Tanbris.
2. Another example is that the book mistakenly refers to
Docking Bay 327 as Docking Bay 2037, first referenced AFAIK on page 297. This is fairly inexplicable to me, as "327" is well known as one of Lucas's signature Easter eggs, at least since the "327 Chevy" line in
American Graffiti (which was spoken by the Terry "the Toad" to Debbie, about the engine of Steve's Chevrolet Impala, and which he's lying about, by the way, because he's trying to impress her).
3. The issue with the surviving Y-wing is as follows. On page 352, after Red Leader and the two other X-wing pilots covering him on his attack run are killed, the book reads as follows.
Death Star by Reaves and Perry said:
“I need locations on the remaining Rebel fighters,” he said.
“At once, Lord Vader.” There was a short pause. “There are only three more, my lord, and they have just entered—”
“—the same trench,” Vader finished. Whatever the target, the Rebels were convinced it was worth every ship they had. He knew he had best finish the last three quickly.
That passage is pretty clearly incompatible with the existence of the Y-wing in the film which is seen escaping the Death Star's explosion with Luke, Wedge, and the
Falcon.
None of these are major issues, of course. There may or may not be other discrepancies with the films.
I find them objectionable
only because they take me out of the moment while reading.
Death Star has gotten mixed reviews, but I was rather impressed with its take on events in Episode IV, and I quite enjoyed reading it. I certainly don't consider its interpretations canonical, and nor does that, or these minor problems here, in any way affect my enjoyment of the book. The book simply offers an alternate interpretation, as far as I'm concerned, and one that I'm glad to have been exposed to.
