In defense of the Death Star + five year Boardiversary

Subject: In defense of the Death Star + five year Boardiversary
Author: Badger421
Posted on: 2021-03-04 23:48:52 UTC

Eeyup, hi. Still here, just slipped back into lurk mode for a bit and then all the sudden there it was, my five year Boardiversary. Doesn't quite feel real, like any moment now I'm going to realize no, of course I haven't been here that long. It's still year four or three or even two. Doesn't help that I first found this place five years before I joined. Stars, what a crazy decade. But hey, no use staring slack jawed into the abyss of time all day, there's fandom work to be done!

So, I've been thinking a lot about Star Wars. Not that that's terribly unusual for me, but I've hit upon a few things that seemed worth posting around here. The first of which is this: the Death Star actually makes sense. From an in-universe perspective, anyway. I don't have the training to speak to the science of it. Let's break it down, shall we?

First off, we all know blowing up planets is pointless. it requires an enormous amount of energy for no real benefit. Unless you're dealing with something like Warhammer 40K, but for most continuums you get exactly the same result from having one suitable capital ship fire on the planet from orbit for a day or two. Even better, you can be selective about your planetary devastation if there are bits you'd actually like to hold on to after you're done. Or if that doesn't matter to you a large asteroid accelerated by a tug or shuttle could easily save you the effort of even firing your weapons.

Point is, only the planet's surface really matters. A fact so obvious that not only does the Imperial Navy have a specific named order (Base Delta Zero) to implement this strategy, so does Starfleet Command (General Order 24). And of course the Covenant use it as standard procedure. So, if it's so obvious that blowing up planets is daft, why did the Empire waste such an absurd amount of time, manpower, and resources on building the Death Star? Because, I think, blowing up planets wasn't the point, it was a statement. Not just to say, "Obey or we'll kill you," that's Tuesday for the Empire. Rather, it says, "There is no possible way for you to stop us now." And as far as the Empire knew, they weren't wrong.

Obviously blowing up an entire population of presumably fairly wealthy tax paying citizens who are likely also much loved by the rest of the galaxy is a less than stellar PR move, but erasing an ancient and quite famous system from the galactic map does a spectacular job of demonstrating the power of the Death Star's superlaser. If it can blow up a planet, no ship in the galaxy could possibly withstand even a glancing hit from it. And it's no use firing at it either, its shield generators would have to be enormous, and anything really important is likely buried under literal miles of durasteel. The largest capital ships in the galaxy could have burned out their own reactors firing for days to no effect. Were it not for one tiny weak spot and a supernaturally lucky pilot, the Death Star would have been functionally invulnerable.

So, you've got an invincible space station. So what? The Empire could probably have produced hundreds of Star Destroyers in place of the Death Star, why not do that instead? Simple: every single one of those hundreds of Star Destroyers needs a captain, a crew, support ships, berths, marine contingents, and supply lines. All opportunities for a captain to desert, a crew to mutiny, a rival to capture or convert them, or subversive elements to destroy or even commandeer one. And over time those losses could add up to a fleet able to actually hurt the Empire. A path remains, however long, however dangerous and infeasible, to victory.

But you only need one Death Star. It could localize all that power in one location that could be overseen by the few people the Emperor actually trusted. Yes, it leaves the Empire slower to respond, but as long as it exists there is no chance for any rebellion, any Imperial secession, any rival power to ever achieve more than momentary victories. The Death Star will always arrive. Turn your world into a fortress, assemble a fleet that could fill a star system, hide in the deepest subterranean depths where no orbital scan can ever find you, it doesn't matter. The Death Star will come for you. There is no hope.

And that, I say, is why the Emperor built the Death Star. Because he recognized that the Galaxy Far Far Away would never truly be his as long as there was the slightest hope of defeating him.

And that's all I've got for today. Blimey I can talk when you give me a site without character limits. Been spending too much time in chatrooms and on social media, feels good to have some breathing room. Thanks for wading through my rambling while I dust out the fandom corners of my brain. Brace yourself for my next Star Wars adjacent ramble, canon schisms! Coming soon-ish to an internet near you.

-Badger

Reply Return to messages

In defense of the Death Star + five year Boardiversary by Badger421 on 2021-03-04 23:48:52 UTC

General thoughts on "the Death Star was an inside job" additions from Rogue One? by Cicada on 2021-03-06 19:45:18 UTC Reply

Basically what it says in the title. Do the folk in this thread who think the Death Star is unreasonably weak think the idea that the design was intentionally sabotaged by the designer makes things make more sense, or nah? I mean, I still think they should've maybe thought up a different superweapon after the first one went down the drain. Honestly.

It's perfectly reasonably weak. by Huinesoron on 2021-03-06 20:29:10 UTC Reply

History is full of 'unbeatable' weapons and strongholds which fell because of weaknesses nobody thought of. There's a famous story that the impregnable Chateau Gaillard fell to the French - and King John of England lost Normandy - because French soldiers snuck in through the toilets. A thousand years more recently, a certain 'unsinkable' ship turned out not only to be sinkable, but I understand the design actually made it sink faster once it was holed.

Of course, even more common is the inside job. The Fall of Constantinople happened in part because someone opened a gate for the besieging Ottomans, and by and large, 'get someone to open the gates' is a much better strategy than 'attack stones with swords'. So I think it's entirely plausible that, of the millions of people involved in the 'what if we made a giant ball that kills planets?' project, someone was going to be at least mildly opposed.

Come to think of it, DS1 was already an inside job before Rogue One - Tarkin's belief that the station could take out snubfighters without its own fighter support let the Rebels get far closer than they should have. Wookiepedia says there were seven thousand TIE fighters on the battlestation - but Tarkin and Vader refused to use them. Incompetence is also a form of betrayal...

As to making a second one: there's a great quote from Han Solo in one of the later New Jedi Order books:

"That's not what the Empire would have done, Commander. What the Empire would have done was build a super-colossal Yuuzhan Vong-killing battle machine. They would have called it the Nova Colossus or the Galaxy Destructor or the Nostril of Palpatine or something equally grandiose. They would have spent billions of credits, employed thousands of contractors and subcontractors, and equipped it with the latest in death-dealing technology. And you know what would have happened? It wouldn't have worked. They'd forget to bolt down a metal plate over an access hatch leading to the main reactors, or some other mistake, and a hotshot enemy pilot would drop a bomb down there and blow the whole thing up. Now that's what the Empire would have done."

And yeah, he makes the exact same point in The Force Awakens... the Empire is so predictable that Han Solo can see what's what. I mean, eesh.

hS

Counterpoint: nahhhhhh. by Huinesoron on 2021-03-05 08:52:15 UTC Reply
First off, the contention that the Death Star is indestructible apart from 'one tiny weak spot' is flat-out false. Case in point: the rebels, still with nothing more than a bunch of starfighters (and a single beat-up freighter) destroyed a second one - and, whichever continuity you're in, practically made a living of blowing up knock-offs. Starkiller Base. The Darksaber. The prototype in the Maw. The Eye of Palpatine. The Galaxy Gun. All of them went pop, usually without firing in anger more than once.

Looking just at DS1 itself, I'll remind you that General Kenobi - who'd been furloughed for an entire generation - managed to infiltrate it essentially by accident. If he'd had a trained Intelligence team rather than a wacky smuggler, the Empire wouldn't even have known they were freeing high-security prisoners until the next change of the guard (if then!). And once you're inside, destroying the thing is almost trivially easy. Two possible approaches:
- Steal some proton torpedos from the TIE bomber bays (or put together something more portable). Carry them down to the reactor which Antilles, Calrissian, and Nunb attacked in the DS2 run. Detonate. We know that makes Death Stars go pop.
- Muck about with the navicomputer, changing the coordinates of the next jump (the Lara Notsil plan). Depending on the continuity you're in, either find something like an exploding star to jump the thing into, or simply point it at an uninhabited planet (The Force Awakens demonstrated that this is possible). Boom.
And that's just off the top of my head. There must be hundreds of ways Tarkin's vanity project could be infiltrated and destroyed.

Which brings me to my second point: your claim that just because one woman couldn't make off with the thing, it's somehow safe from defection? Please. One disaffected pilot could carry out the proton torpedo plan. One angry main cannon technician could divert the beam slightly, causing it to strike the inside of the 'barrel'. One Rebel sympathiser on the night shift navigation team could pilot it straight into the Unknown Reasons. The Death Star isn't secure against all possible rebels - it's utterly at the mercy of every one.

... and it wouldn't work anyway! Grand Moff Tarkin may have believed in the power of an iron fist, but as General Organa said, 'the more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers'. The destruction of Alderaan did nothing to stop the Rebellion, turned Leia Organa into a highly effective frontline fighter (rather than a mediocre spy), and - at least in Legends - gave the Rebellion many of its best pilots, who defected after they heard about it.

And this happened every time. The destruction of Camaas made the Camaasi universally beloved. Isard's attempt to turn Coruscant into a plague-world led directly to her own destruction. In the NuGFFA, Operation Cinder... well, that wasn't meant to achieve anything other than misery, but Starkiller Base's single shot led to the fall of the First Order. Tarkin may have thought you can blow up planets to subjugate people, but someone should have stood up and said, 'um, nah, doesn't work'.

Darth Vader, of all people, had the right of it: "the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant compared to the power of the Force". The Emperor already had the most powerful weapon in the galaxy at his disposal - but in both continuities, he never even told the general population about his powers! If he wanted to rule through fear, then "I can literally open a dark magic wormhole over your head and blast your planet with uncontrollable Force storms" (see Dark Empire) is far more persuasive than "my space station is big, please don't touch it".

You actually pointed the way at this yourself: Warhammer 40K. Ol' Sheevy made himself Emperor, but as the sole remaining fully-powered Force user in the galaxy, he should have been God-Emperor.

(For more Star Wars/Warhammer malarkey, you may be interested in Star WarHammer: Everyone Has A Headache, quite possibly the greatest crossover ever to come out of the PPC.)

hS

Come now, that's a tiny bit unfair to the Empire by Badger421 on 2021-03-09 01:17:22 UTC Reply

Yes, the Alliance destroyed the Death Star II, but for one thing it wasn't just those plucky little starfighter (and the Falcon), they had a whole fleet to draw the fire of the larger ships. Ace pilot or no, you don't want to take chances when there's a few hundred turbolasers pointed at you and you're their only target, not to mention swarms of TIEs. More to the point, however, they were only able to access DS2's reactor because it had a giant hole in the superstructure. To pull off the same trick on DS1 you'd have to walk through miles of corridors and catwalks, most of which have easily sealable blast doors. Even the Empire isn't quite incompetent enough for that.

I'll grant you the knockoffs are basically worthless, though. Frankly recycling the idea once was silly in-universe and out, and it only got worse from there.

Now, as for the idea of infiltrating the station, it's certainly a more feasible attack strategy than engaging it ship to ship, but I think you're being a tad harsh on the ol' murder machine. Yes, Leia escaped, but only because Vader let her. He knew from the moment the Falcon landed that something was wrong, and it didn't take him long to figure out what. Think back to the detention level, how long does it take for things to devolve into a shootout? The plan doesn't last fifteen seconds before they have to kill everybody, and after Han's attempt at covering their tracks fails Tarkin himself is notified. Obviously they wouldn't have been allowed to even make it that far on a truly competently run station, but the security force doesn't even need to catch any intruders on the first try.

The beauty of having everything important buried under miles of durasteel is that it doesn't matter if your clever ruse fools the first set of guards, or you're fast enough to gun down the second, there would have to be scores of similar checkpoints on the way to the core or the navigation systems or the firing controls, with security getting tighter and your alibi wearing thinner at every single one. And once you're discovered, it's over. Even if you had a lightsaber you couldn't cut through every blast door between you and your target in time. Sure, you can muck about for a while on the surface in some of the less important areas like the hangar bay or the detention level—remember the Death Star isn't meant to be a prison, the Empire has whole planets for that—but the biggest points of failure have the least reason for a bunch of strangers to be.

As for your point about defection, I think you have more trust in individuals than the Empire does. On something so massive why would they ever trust just one person to do, well, anything? Navigation? The thing's so big and dense it probably generates it's own gravity, would you trust one person to run the hyperspace navigation? Maintenance? There's got to be hundreds of minor points of failure in every system, you'd need people checking them around the clock.

Even if some of your ideas would work at first, they might not even accomplish anything. Consider the cannon technician. Even if you managed to somehow sabotage an emitter, and you did it at the last minute so there was no chance anyone else would fix it, and none of the other operators who know exactly how the procedure is done notice that you're deviating from protocol, you've still only damaged one of six beams of the actual laser! You might have slightly better luck with the navigator if you got really lucky and you were actually close enough to something dangerous to fly the station into it before your shift ended, but we know from TCW that onboard navicomputers alert the crew when they detect hazards. Is everyone you work with going to ignore that? Do you know how to sabotage that specific alert? Can you trust that tampering with the system won't trip some other alarm, or that there are no redundancies in the navicomputer? I wouldn't bet on it.

Of course all of this is rather redundant if you're right about it not working, which... yeah, no, you're totally right. I am tempted to argue that the Death Star might have been a bit less of a rallying cry if it hadn't, y'know, exploded, but the point remains that the Empire paid for Alderaan over and over and over again. Even if it were the only example in Star Wars the pattern would remain.

However, I didn't say the Death Star was the right csll, I said it made sense. :p Semantics, maybe, but the point is that the Death Star wasn't so daft as much of the internet (myself included) have made it out to be over the years.

I am going to be a teeeeeny tiny bit petty and contest the bit about ol' Sheevy. True, in later canon he was basically a god, but when the Death Star was actually written all Palpatine could actually do was see the future and shoot lightning from his fingers. Legends and RoS gave him a huge power boost, but from the perspective of the original Lucasian canon (films 1-6 + TCW) he wasn't really capable of soloing a galaxy, so it seems a touch unfair to judge the Death Star based on his later appearances. After all it's hardly its fault if later canon took out its logical framework at the knees.

My defence of the Death Star: by Scapegrace on 2021-03-05 01:56:15 UTC Reply

Point defence turbolaser turrets, on-board TIE fighters, potent shield banks, and putting a bit of sealant in that one weirdly-positioned thermal exhaust port.

Ooh, here's an idea. by Huinesoron on 2021-03-05 09:12:32 UTC Reply

What if you refused to launch those TIE fighters until some uniformed flunky pointed out the blindingly obvious fact that huge turbolaser turrets can't possibly rotate fast enough to hit Rebel snubfighters? And then you could launch, like, half a dozen, with the Emperor's pet wizard in charge of them. I bet that would end really well for you. :D :D :D

(Interestingly, Wookiepedia asserts that in the original continuity, the Death Star couldn't have proper onboard particle shielding - the superlaser drew too much power. Hence why they only shoved a bit of ray shielding over the exhaust system and called it a day, I guess.)

hS