The General Star Wars Thread

The Death Star had a crew of a bit over a million. Luke obviously wasn’t thinking about that in the moment but he was very sad when he was told later. Poor kid.

Ciena in Lost Stars also uses the “but the Death Star crew!” argument in-universe as part of her justification for remaining with the Empire even post-Alderaan, despite multiple “WTF mate?” speeches from her boyfriend.

The fact that one of those crew was her best friend and probably the single least evil person in the entire Imperial military likely had something to do with that.

I recall JJ Abrams saying as a kid he thought stormtroopers were robots. And when I watched ANH with a friend who hadn’t seen any of the movies, she asked to clarify what the stormtroopers were and if they were robots or humans inside the armor. It seems to be a common experience, don’t see a face, don’t see people.

@Hamburger Time

Luke Skywalker and the shadows of Mindor also mentioned that there's been holodramas of Luke's adventures.

I would love to see how Darth Vader's "I am your father" moment was adapted.

I guess I always saw Stormtroopers as human, but since they were faceless and I was a kid, I kind of had a sociopathic view of their lives.

Edited by SatoshiBakura on Dec 2nd 2022 at 2:07:03 PM

I thought they were robots too

Thane also used that line - that woman was his friend too - to justify why he refused to join up with the Alliance even after he became disillusioned with the Empire.

But eventually he comes around. The big reason being that, as horrible as losing his friend and comrades was, the deaths will stop if the Alliance wins the war. But the killings will go on forever if the Empire wins.

The latter fact is also what finally breaks Ciena in the end. She’d rationalized Alderaan as a horrible but necessary one-time show of force to save more lives that would be lost in the long term… and then she sees the Death Star II. And realizes that the Empire will destroy many, many more Alderaans. BECAUSE THEY CAN.

Edited by HamburgerTime on Dec 2nd 2022 at 1:13:51 PM

Yeah, the Death Star having a lot of casualties was a big plot point in Lost Stars. The theme for all the Imperial characters is basically "how much are you willing to condone before you stop rationalizing," and each of them reach a point where they say "I can't take this any more" and leave the Empire, but all of them have different limits to what they can accept so some stay evil much longer than others.

The one who stays evil permanently is the one who has basically twisted their brain so that they could rationalize anything. (I really wish Nash Windrider had shown up in the ST, btw. They could've replaced that old general in TROS with him or something).

But anyway, the Death Star destruction and the casualties involves is really important in that story, because it's a big part of those rationalizations. The Imperial characters have a lot of Moral Myopia, and most find themselves thinking "why should we listen to the rebels when they're willing to do something like this to us, they're probably lying about all the stuff they say we did anyway," and have to have the truth hit them in the face before they can change.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Dec 2nd 2022 at 11:16:56 AM

According to the X-Wing novels from Legends the Empire had some really bad propaganda movies - Garik Loran, Wraith Squadron pilot and former child actor, starred in a fair lot of them.

Here's one example he actually talks about in Wraith Squadron.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Dec 2nd 2022 at 8:36:56 PM

The Moral Myopia of the imperials is amusing. Like, your space station fucking blew up a (nominally) neutral planet, and you are calling the Rebels the terrorists for responding? But of course, they have to view the destruction of Alderaan as necessary. Because of they don't, it means the empire is wrong, and all that they stood for means nothing.

The ability to keep going on regardless of the amount of casualties you'll inflict reminds me of a line from Attack on Titan

"Keep going forward. Even if you die. Even after you die."

Words to live by Eren, words to live by.

Honestly, half the fun of playing loyal Imperial/Sith characters in SWTOR is coming up with the self-righteous justifications.

Like one of my characters, a Sith Warrior is pissed at the Jedi for the previous genocide against the Sith species by the Republic and Jedi, so his response is to commit as many atrocities as possible against the Republic and Jedi.

And then brush off a Jedi who calls him out as being hypocritical and breaking their code. Then getting pissed at the gall of said Jedi to kill Imperials sent to kill said Jedi.

In Legends, the Empire tried to downplay the Death Star's existence as the Rebels hijacking some huge mining station and destroying Alderaan with it. Almost nobody believed it, obviously.

They did that in Rogue One too, claiming Jedha was destroyed in a mining accident.

Death Star the novel is interesting for its perspectives of Imperials on board the space station. They all have that "wait what the hell" moment too, a little bit sooner than most other Imperials because they were there and they saw Alderaan (and before it, a prison world blown up as a test) get destroyed—hell, one of them is the gunner who pulled the lever. The viewpoint characters all either die or escape just before the Death Star is actually blown up, though. Except the gunner, he's the guy who says "stand by" long enough for Luke to take the shot, because he's breaking down over having to do it again. And the escapees immediately defect to the Rebellion because, like, Yavin 4 is right there, so yeah.

Edited by HeraldAlberich on Dec 2nd 2022 at 3:49:13 PM

IIRC, the Canon Imperial party line for why Alderaan happened is that the Rebels overran the planet, turning it into a Wretched Hive and staging ground for criminal and terrorist activity and framing Leia as essentially an insurgent warlord rallying the planet against everyone else, forcing them to take extreme measures to remove a threat to the rest of the galaxy.

It's complete bullshit and most people know it is, but it works on that population of Imperials who are need to justify continuing to support the Empire to themselves.

Way too late to edit but I massively messed up what I was trying to say. What I meant was the crew of the Death Star was not all Stormtroopers, there were obvious human crew as well so even if you thought Stormtroopers were robots you still must know Luke killed actual people when he destroyed the Death Star.

Edited by dcutter2 on Dec 2nd 2022 at 11:32:46 AM

The funny thing I just realized about that is despite Ted, Marshall, and Barney all being Star Wars fanatics and making a point of watching the OT every year as tradition, Lily knew little to nothing about Star Wars despite being in a relationship with Marshall since college.

Somehow she caught very little secondhand onowledge of the franchise even if she wasn't that interested in it.

I still remember the Clerks scene where a roofer debunks the argument that the Rebel Alliance's culpable for the deaths of any independent contractors working on maintaining the Death Star.

Edited by M84 on Dec 2nd 2022 at 7:48:18 PM

I actually never realised the Clerks scene ended with it being debunked! Slightly happier about that now.

Of course it seems pretty fallacious to assume that there must have been civilian contractors working on it at all. Also that "The Imperial Army" would have been the ones building a moon sized warship anyway. (It's called a battlestation it's not stationary though it has engines, it's a ship)

One idea that did stick with me sense I read this book when I was younger was there being innocent prisoners on the death star.

I swear there was this book I read when I was younger, and one was an imperial dude who, despite loving his family, turned his son in for trying to defect to the rebellion. And his wife was arrested too as she was planning to help him. They were transferred to the death star and died on it when it exploded. He became obsessed with killing Luke, blaming them for their deaths(even though he got them in that position to start with).

I can't remember the name of the character or book, but I remember it being a pretty hardcore concept.

Edited by Snoketrope on Dec 2nd 2022 at 4:35:11 AM

No wonder Imperial deaths tend to cause a reaction of "who'll get the next blaster bolt" or the like.

I do wonder why they would be putting political prisoners on the Death Star to begin with.

One of the multiplayer objectives for the Starkiller Base map on Battlefront II is powering down the detention cells and rescuing the prisoners before the planet explodes.

Star Trek Deep Space Nine had some characters talk about the necessity of civilian casualties in guerilla warfare, if the enemy realizes you are pulling punches based on civilian collateral they will deliberately spread independent contractors and political prisoners to valuable targets as a type of human shield.

Plus just about any sufficiently large military base or craft will have a brig, if not dedicated prison blocks. Long term incarceration is a different thing, as people will be moved around depending on what is needed from them.