Star Wars midrash

I’ve linked before the amazing final post of Darth Vader’s blog, Darth Vader Superstar.

I was born forty-nine years ago, less a day. I was born a slave, as billions are born slaves. When I was a child I did not immediately imagine that I deserved freedom, for this was not my mother’s attitude. Suffering was to be endured. She admitted a patient hope for less cruel masters, when we were between them. She taught that if freedom was in our destinies, fate would find us.

A friend just pointed me at another masterpiece of Star Wars apologetics, Reconsidering Star Wars IV in the light of I-III. [I’ve archived the whole thing below, dreading linkrot.]

As Star Wars opens, R2 is rushing the Death Star plans to the Rebellion. That’s R2, not Leia. The plans are always in R2. What Leia puts into him in the early scene is only her own holographic message to Kenobi. Leia’s own mission, as she says in that holographic message, is to pick up Obi-Wan and take him to Alderaan. Or so she thinks. Actually, her father just wants her to meet Kenobi, which up to this point she never has. There’s a reason for that.

An index

Since this original post, a lot of great revisionist readings have of course turned up:

A People’s History of Tattooine

⋯ that Obi Wan thinks his little “put the hood over my head and make strange noises” is what scares Sand People is racist too. Maybe they just run because they don’t want to deal with the racist old man who gets violent and complains more will come back ⋯

The Radicalization of Luke Skywalker: A Jedi’s Path to Jihad

Obi Wan — a religious fanatic with a history of looking for young boys to recruit and teach an extreme interpretation of the Force — is practically salivating when he stumbles upon Luke, knowing he’s found a prime candidate for radicalization. Stahelski notes terror groups place a focus on depluralization, stripping away the recruit’s membership from all groups and isolating them to increase their susceptibility to terrorist messaging. Within moments of meeting Luke, Obi-Wan tells Luke he must abandon his family and join him, going so far as telling a shocking lie that the Empire killed Luke’s father, hoping to inspire Luke to a life of jihad.

Kempshall, Chris. The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire

A full book by a proper historian!

Leia Organa: A Critical Obituary

The Organa Doctrine is widely believed to have won the Galactic Civil War. According to Admiral Gial Ackbar (Ret.):

“It was impossible to defeat the massed Imperial Starfleet, so the question was always one of choosing the most effective targets. The Sienar and Kuat combines possessed redundant facilities to the extent that we could barely put a dent in ship production. The Organa Doctrine identified the Empire’s critical weakness and through rigorous materialist analysis, showed us where to hit the hardest, and hurt them the most. And as one faction fell with its project, another took its place, eager to please the Emperor with some new, grand mission. It was their trap – inescapable, embedded within their political praxis.”

This Simple Trick Makes The Original ‘Star Wars’ Prequels Way More Watchable

⋯ rewatching Episodes I, II, and III were tedious slogs made better by only two things: snark and a shocking reveal that the subtext here could be that Padme was totally cheating on Anakin with Obi-Wan Kenobi.

I mean, the evidence is right there staring you in the face, coloring everything that happens in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith into a fairly passable arc of love and revenge. Don’t believe me? Put on your ship-goggles and let’s go on a journey!

Endor holocaust

This document does not advocate or condone the extinction or betrayal of ewoks, it merely reports upon a physical situation and the acts involved.

The circumstances at the end of Return of the Jedi lead inevitably to an environmental disaster on the Endor moon. The explosion of a small artificial moon in low orbit sends a meteoric rain onto the ewok sanctuary, on a scale unmatched since Endor formed. Through either direct atmospheric injection of small particles, or showers of ejecta from large impacts, the atmosphere will be filled with smoke and fallout causing a gargantuan nuclear-winter effect.

The case for the Empire

Mostly a satire of the right

Make no mistake, as emperor, Palpatine is a dictator — but a relatively benign one, like Pinochet. It’s a dictatorship people can do business with. They collect taxes and patrol the skies. They try to stop organized crime (in the form of the smuggling rings run by the Hutts). The Empire has virtually no effect on the daily life of the average, law-abiding citizen.

Also, unlike the divine-right Jedi, the Empire is a meritocracy. The Empire runs academies throughout the galaxy (Han Solo begins his career at an Imperial academy), and those who show promise are promoted, often rapidly. In the Empire Strikes Back Captain Piett is quickly promoted to admiral when his predecessor “falls down on the job.”

The destruction of Alderaan was completely justified

First off, let’s dispense with the childish notion that Alderaan was, as rebel spy and intergalactic insurrectionist Princess Leia has argued, a purely civilian target. There is literally no reason to believe her claim that “Alderaan is peaceful, we have no weapons.” She had previously lied about not only the diplomatic nature of the mission she was on when she was captured but also about the location of the stolen Death Star plans. It’s also worth noting that she would go on to lie about the location of a military target for the Death Star to target moments before Alderaan was destroyed.

The guys who caused basically every problem in Star Wars

Sort of about the Rosencrantz & Guildenstern of the galaxy.

Death Star project management

A whole sub-genre of its own!

Instruments of destruction

My favorite!

The Executor, first of the Executor-class Super Star Destroyers, had been built in four months. Every ship after that had taken ten months. How did you shrink ten months down into four? You could start by doing all the things that Jerjerrod had done, eliminating words like “testing” and “safety” and “sleep” from your vocabulary. Yet that wouldn’t make up for such a shortfall. The real answer to how the Executor had been constructed in four months was that it hadn’t been. Instead, the men and women who built the Executor had simply changed their definition of done. The ship had left the shipyard on time, under its own power, yet that was virtually all that it was capable of. The rest of the construction had been done as “final touches” to the ship long after its maiden voyage, at a far greater expense than if the ship had simply been completed in the shipyard.

That left Jerjerrod with the question of what it meant for the Death Star to be “done” ⋯

The Death Star: Poor Project Management in Practice

1. Bad Assumptions
2. Poor Escalation of Issues
3. The Production Deadline Drives the Process

10 Reasons Projects Fail: Lessons from the Death Star

1. Insufficient project requirements
2. Insufficient project requirements
3. No risk management strategy
4. Managers lack necessary skills to aid collaboration & project success
5. Choosing a pet idea without considering all the options
6. Failure to reflect & learn from past mistakes
7. A stakeholder insists on unrealistic commitments
8. Insufficient resources
9. Leadership undermines team morale and success
10. Side projects distract from your main goal

3 ways a project manager could have saved the Death Star

1. Implement robust knowledge management
2. Ensure effective prioritisation
3. Communicate an inspiring vision

Reconsidering Star Wars IV in the light of I-III

[I originally wrote this piece in 2005 and a friend posted it on his website. That site has recently gone down, so I'm reposting it here, as it still gets a lot of interest.]

If we accept all the Star Wars films as the same canon (as it seems we must) then a lot that happens in the original films has to be reinterpreted in the light of the prequels. As we now know, the rebel Alliance was founded by Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Bail Organa. What can readily be deduced is that their first recruit, who soon became their top field agent, was R2-D2.

Consider: at the end of Revenge of the Sith, Bail Organa orders 3PO’s memory wiped but not R2’s. He would not make the distinction casually. Both droids know that Yoda and Obi-Wan are alive and are plotting sedition with the Senator from Alderaan. They know that Amidala survived long enough to have twins and could easily deduce where they went. However, it can be assumed that R2 makes an impassioned speech to the effect that he is far more use to them with his mind intact: he has observed Palpatine and Anakin at close quarters for many years, knows much that is useful and is one of the galaxy’s top experts at hacking into other people’s systems. Also he can lie through his teeth with a straight face. Organa, in immediate need of espionage resources, agrees.

For the next 20 years, as far as C3PO knows, he is the property of Captain Antilles, doing protocol duties on a diplomatic transport. He is vaguely aware of the existence of Princess Leia but he doesn’t know much about her. Wherever 3PO goes, being as loud and obvious as he always is, his unobtrusive little counterpart goes with him. 3PO is R2’s front man. Wherever they land, R2 is passing messages between rebel sympathisers and sizing up governments as potential rebel recruits — both by personal contact and by hacking into their networks. He passes his recommendations on to Organa.

Yoda is out of the picture by this stage, using the Force-infused swamps of Dagobah to hide himself from Vader and the Emperor. Or something. He is meditating on the future and keeping in touch with Obi-Wan via the ghost of Qui-Gon Jin, which as comm systems go has the virtue of being untappable. Obi-Wan, on Tattoine, keeps in touch with Bail Organa and the other Rebel leaders by courier, of which more later.

As Star Wars [Episode IV: A New Hope] opens, R2 is rushing the Death Star plans to the Rebellion. That’s R2, not Leia. The plans are always in R2. What Leia puts into him in the early scene is only her own holographic message to Kenobi. Leia’s own mission, as she says in that holographic message, is to pick up Obi-Wan and take him to Alderaan. Or so she thinks. Actually, her father just wants her to meet Kenobi, which up to this point she never has. There’s a reason for that.

Obi-Wan has spent the last 20 years in the Tattoine desert, keeping watch over Luke Skywalker and trying to decide on one of the three available options:

1. If Luke shows no significant access to the Force, then leave him alone in obscurity
2. If Luke shows real Force ability, then consider recruiting him as a Jedi. The rebellion needs Jedi and it needs them now. But, if Luke shows any signs of turning out like his father, then:
3. sneak into his house one fine night and chop his head off. With great regret but it’ll save a lot of trouble later on.

Knowing this to be the case, Bail Organa (perhaps at the insistence of his wife) has found excuses not to send Leia to Ben for assessment of Jedi potential, largely for fear of option C.

To be fair to all concerned, Leia has shown no overt signs of a link to the Force. Luke on the other hand has. In his home-built hotrod aircraft, with no formal fighter pilot training and no decent instrumentation, Luke can regularly score centre-hits on two-metre targets in complex zero-altitude maneouvres. Until he attends the briefing on Yavin, Luke has no way of knowing that hardened combat pilots would consider that nearly impossible. To him it’s easy. Obi-Wan, who saw Anakin’s performance in the Pod Race, is nervous.

Much of Obi-Wan’s behaviour in this film, and Yoda’s in the next, can best be understood if they are frankly scared to death of what Luke might become. (Ben is also scared that he himself will make all the same mistakes he made with Anakin.)

Now, with the existence of the rebellion at stake, Bail Organa has finally told Leia to go see Obi-Wan and has sent her along with R2. The original plan would then be for Obi-Wan (with optional Luke and/or Leia in tow) to leave his exile and take the Death Star plans to Yavin, where they can be put to use. R2 (with Leia if Ben doesn’t want to take her) would then carry on to Alderaan to maintain the cover story. The original plan does not survive contact with a large Imperial Star Destroyer.

R2 and 3PO bail out in an escape pod. Landing in vaguely the right area of Tattoine, R2’s first priority is transport. He arranges to be captured by a group of Jawas and, once on board their vehicle, he makes a deal with them (possibly using emergency funds stored elsewhere on the planet) to take him where he wants to go. The Jawas refuse to go directly to Kenobi for fear of marauding Sandpeople but they agree to R2’s second request : transport to the farm of Owen Lars. They even get to keep the purchase price if they can sell R2 and 3PO there. R2 and the Jawas shake on it and they go through with the plan.

Seeing 3PO fail to recognise the farm where he worked for 10 miserable years gives R2 a moment’s amusement but, as soon as opportunity presents itself, he makes a break for it and heads for Obi-Wan. Luke and 3PO follow, which may or may not have been part of the plan.

On first seeing R2, Obi-Wan has a twinkle in his eye and calls him “my little friend”. Well, he is. However, when Luke wakes up and says that R2 claimed to be owned by an Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ben blandly says “I don’t seem to remember ever owning a droid.” Ben has in fact owned several but the remark is aimed at R2 and translates as “You keep quiet. I’m not about to tell him everything just yet.” Obi-Wan thinks fast and tells Luke a version of his past that does not involve a father who became a dark lord of the Sith. Ben wants to examine Luke a lot more closely before he risks telling him the real truth.

Although the Death Star plans need to get to Yavin as soon as possible, Obi-Wan has one more diversion to make first. If the Empire knows that Leia is a Rebel leader, then they also know about her father, so the whole Organa family may need immediate evacuation. Fortunately, before coming to Tattoine, R2 had already arranged transport, which is waiting at Mos Eisley under the command of the Rebellion’s other chief field agent and espionage asset. Chewbacca.

Twenty years earlier, Chewbacca was second in command of the defence of his planet. He was there in the tactical conferences and there on the front lines and was a personal friend of Yoda’s. So when he needed reliable people to join the embryonic Alliance, who else would Yoda turn to but his old friend from Kashykk? Given his background, it makes no sense that Chewbacca would spend the crucial years of the rebellion as the second-in-command to (sorry Han) a low-level smuggler. Unless it was his cover. In fact, Chewie is a top-line spy and flies what is in many ways the Rebellion’s best ship.

The Millenium Falcon may look like a beat-up old freighter but it can outrun any Imperial ship in normal space or hyperspace, hang in a firefight with a Star Destroyer or outmaneouvre a dozen top-of-the-line TIE fighters. It’s a remarkable feat of engineering and must have cost a colossal fortune to build. How does Han come to own a ship like that? Actually, he only thinks he does – the real owner is Chewie. Half-way through Revenge of the Sith, we see the Falcon landing at the Senate building on Coruscant. If it’s the same ship (which of course it is) then it was the personal transport of one of the senatorial delegations - a much more likely source to commission its design. That delegation must have later joined the Rebellion and given it the use of the Falcon. In fact, if the delegation was the one from Kashykk, then the ship may have belonged to Chewbacca as early as Revenge of the Sith.

Han is Chewbacca’s front man. It’s much better, and safer for him, if he doesn’t know what’s really going on. Chewie used to work with Lando Calrissian in a similar way but Lando wanted to settle down, so Chewie arranged for him to lose the Falcon in a card game to Han Solo, an even better choice as a partner. Han and Chewie’s working method is pretty much what we see in the cantina scene: Chewie make the contacts and sets up the deals, then turns them over to Han, who haggles over the price and gives the final yea or nay. This lets Chewbacca wander the seamy underside of the galaxy pretty much at will, making contacts, gathering and passing information with no-one was the wiser, especially not Han.

It was Chewie who persuaded Han to do business with Jabba the Hutt, so that they could make regular runs to Tattoine, where Chewie could pass messages between Kenobi and Organa. When R2’s urgent message came through only days before, the only way for Chewie to get back to Tattoine in time was to make the “mistake” that forced Han to dump his cargo to avoid capture. As a down side, this led to Solo’s getting a death mark out on him from Jabba the Hutt. Chewie was a bit upset about that but figured they weren’t going to be dealing with Tattoine for much longer.

En route to Alderaan, R2 and Chewie play stop-motion chess. This is the latest in a series of games that they’ve played over the years in the back rooms of space stations and cantinas across the galaxy, but this is the first time they’ve done it in front of their respective straight men, so they put on a big show.

Then it all goes wrong again. Alderaan has been destroyed and the Falcon is captured and brought aboard the Death Star. Han, Luke and 3PO don’t know just how much trouble they’re in but Obi-Wan, R2 and Chewbacca know only too well. However, Obi-Wan has a plan and seems confident of pulling it off (but then Jedi always do). Soon afterwards, while Obi-Wan is away, R2 discovers that Leia is in the detention cells and shouts out that they have to rescue her, to which Chewie can only agree. If Vader learns that he has a daughter, then they’re all in very deep trouble, so Chewie does his bit to persuade Han to go along with Luke’s impromptu rescue plan.

The escape nearly works but then Vader himself turns up only yards away from both of his children, one of whom is leaking Force in all directions. Obi-Wan sees what is happening and stages a distraction by letting himself die and go into the Force while the others escape.

At this point, Chewbacca suddenly realises that he’s been left in charge, not only of the Death Star Plans and the survival of the Rebellion (which would be responsibility enough) but of the secret son and daughter of Darth Vader. With the Organas and Kenobi all dead, only Chewie, R2 and Yoda know who Luke and Leia really are and only Obi-Wan had any idea where to find Yoda. Chewbacca is stressed out by his new responsibilities and R2 (who keeps making crude jokes about the whole affair) is being no help at all.

Chewie’s first problem is what is happening between Luke and Leia. With a psychic link they can feel but not understand, thrown together in a life-or-death escape, they are looking at each other with a sparky intensity that Chewie gradually recognises as Romantic Tension. He is no expert on human relationships but Chewie is fairly sure that that’s Wrong, so he does the only thing he can think of under the circumstances - he throws Han at her. Han is not interested at first, but after a while he starts to warm to the idea with an intensity that gives Chewie new worries.

When they reach Yavin, Han opts to take the money and run and Chewie decides to go with him. Looked at in a cold light, it’s for the good of the Rebellion. Even if Yavin is destroyed, there will be one agent who knows what’s going on who can try to put something back together. Still, Chewie doesn’t feel good about it and when Han decides to turn around and join the attack, the wookiee is all for it.

With the Death Star destroyed, Han and Luke get medals but Chewie doesn’t. Actually, Leia offers him one but the wookiee turns it down. He got one of those things from Yoda about twenty years ago, but there’s no way he can tell her that.

As the film ends, the three founders of the Rebellion are all gone. Bail Organa is dead, Yoda is out of contact and the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi can only talk to other Jedi. (So that would be Yoda then.) Thus, the field leadership of the rebellion has just been turned over to the daughter of Darth Vader. Chewie is hoping that someone with an official rank greater than hers will reach Yavin soon, before he has to think really seriously about option C.

© Keith Martin 2005