Current Events > Why didn't the Death Star just blow up planet Yavin? (Star Wars spoilers)

(+) Yeah! (+)

During the Battle of Yavin 4, the Empire was waiting for the Rebel base on the 4th moon of Yavin to finish orbiting the planet to a point where the Death Star would have a direct shot at the moon. But why not just blow up the planet that the moon was orbiting? Like, isn't it kind of dumb for the Death Star crew to say "We would use the Death Star to blow up the rebel base on that moon there, but there's a planet in the way"? Isn't the whole purpose of the Death Star to blow up planets?

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Same reason everything happens in fictional movies. Plot.

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SevenTenths posted...

Same reason everything happens in fictional movies. Plot hole.

ftfy

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Mike_Stanton posted...

ftfy

You didnt fix anything butters

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SevenTenths posted...

You didnt fix anything butters

I added the word "hole" after "plot" to your sentence, as the question in the topic title is indeed a plot hole.

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George Lucas is no storyline genius

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Except it isn't. You being insufferable isn't a plot hole.

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SevenTenths posted...

Except it isn't. You being insufferable isn't a plot hole.

If the only possible answer to a question is "Plot" then it is indeed a hole in the plot.

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Same reason they held their fire on the droids escaping

"You don't do the budget Terry I do"

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Mike_Stanton posted...

If the only possible answer to a question is "Plot" then it is indeed a hole in the plot.

Nope. If the only answer is plot, it's a piece of fiction

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SevenTenths posted...

Nope. If the only answer is plot, it's a piece of fiction with a plot hole.

ftfy

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The Death Star doesn't have infinite power. Gas giants have much more mass than a moon. If they fired through Yavin itself, the superlaser would have lost power before hitting Yavin 4.

Also hubris. The Empire, Tarkin specifically, were big on the inevitability of the Rebellion's failure, so just dropping into orbit for fifteen minutes wasn't seen as a big deal if it meant they could get a clear shot.

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CyricZ posted...

The Death Star doesn't have infinite power. Gas giants have much more mass than a moon. If they fired through Yavin itself, the superlaser would have lost power before hitting Yavin 4.

Also hubris. The Empire, Tarkin specifically, were big on the inevitability of the Rebellion's failure, so just dropping into orbit for fifteen minutes wasn't seen as a big deal if it meant they could get a clear shot.

Okay, that explanation makes sense. Thank you, Cyric. *huggles*

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The accepted logic is that the Death Star 1s main cannon required a cool down of indeterminate time. A simple passing line from a couple of stormtroopers talking about it would've cleared it up.

Also would make sense why Death Star IIs laser being able to fire multiple times is a big deal.

Though I guess blowing up the planet, particularly since it's a Gas Giant, at such a close range to the Death Star could have posed some risk.

Anyways HISHE covered this in 2007

https://youtu.be/zzoeEdW-EDQ

The old background story had it that the Commander (who kept repeating "Standby") felt tremendous guilt over destroying Alderaan. He purposefully delayed firing, as to give the Rebels the best chance of stopping the Empire.

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008Zulu posted...

The old background story had it that the Commander (who kept repeating "Standby") felt tremendous guilt over destroying Alderaan. He purposefully delayed firing, as to give the Rebels the best chance of stopping the Empire.

https://youtu.be/XaKgRe6GuUQ

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UnfairRepresent posted...

https://youtu.be/XaKgRe6GuUQ

I'm glad you posted this clip

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Darth Vader's favourite hanar porn is produced on Yavin.

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Can you even destroy a gas planet? The beam would just pass right through it right?
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Duncanwii posted...

Can you even destroy a gas planet? The beam would just pass right through it right?

Gas planets have a solid core.

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Thompson posted...

Gas planets have a solid core.

Any major debris caught in the gravitational pull of the planet will contribute to a solid core as well.

Blowing up Yavin would ultimately destroy Yavin 4 but give the rebels plenty of time to escape. Blowing up Yavin 4 was by far the much better idea.

Tarkin likely didn't believe they could make the shot they needed to. The rebels even said it was highly unlikely. Only Darth Vader understood that they had a force user in the squad that was a real threat and Vader probably figured he could deal with it himself.

And he would have if not for the surprise return of Han Solo.

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i wanna know; how fast does the Deat Star move?

does it have FTL engines?
if so, couldn't they have dropped out of it on the other side of the planet?

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ROBANN_88 posted...

i wanna know; how fast does the Deat Star move?

does it have FTL engines?
if so, couldn't they have dropped out of it on the other side of the planet?

Death Star has a hyperdrive but it's the slowest class. Essentially everything about it is slow.

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ROBANN_88 posted...

if so, couldn't they have dropped out of it on the other side of the planet?

Travelling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops.

In essence, travel through hyperspace is via established routes (as if they were interstellar highways). Colliding with a mass shadow in hyperspace would not be great for the Death Star.

So much like how when the Falcon arrived and they had to travel around Yavin to land on Yavin 4, so too did the Death Star.

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Hey, that's a neat piece of trivia there.

And that's all it is.

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CyricZ posted...

Travelling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops.

Unless it's rise of Skywalker then fuck it. Jump from planet surface to planet surface. No problem. Gather the entire galaxy into one point and all arrive at the same time. No problem.

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SevenTenths posted...

Gather the entire galaxy into one point and all arrive at the same time.

Huh?

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SevenTenths posted...

Unless it's rise of Skywalker then fuck it. Jump from planet surface to planet surface. No problem. Gather the entire galaxy into one point and all arrive at the same time. No problem.

just a sad reminder that at one point the movies at least tried to make technical sense...

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Tyranthraxus posted...

Tarkin likely didn't believe they could make the shot they needed to. The rebels even said it was highly unlikely. Only Darth Vader understood that they had a force user in the squad that was a real threat and Vader probably figured he could deal with it himself.

This is pretty much why Rogue One sucks

The exhuast port weakness makes a lot more sense as being a mere oversight than an intentional flaw

It was literally a million-to-one shot that wouldn't not have worked without the Force

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CyricZ posted...

The Death Star doesn't have infinite power.

And this. The Death Star's superlaser more than likely has limited range. It's not utter BS like Starkiller Base that can blow up an entire system anywhere in the galaxy.

The Death Star had to be within a certain range in order for the superlaser to be effective, and take out a planet in one shot. The proximity to the gas giant Yavin surely would have taken out the Death Star if they had blown it up rather than just the moon.

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Yeah, the Empire was content to just eventually get there and destroy the planet. Supposedly the climax of the film wasn't even supposed to be a tense countdown to the destruction of the moon. The Rebels were mounting their final defense but weren't minutes away from destruction. The harsh time limit and last-minute victory were added in the edit.

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The original Death Star took hours to charge and gas giants have solid cores.

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1. The Death Star has limited range and may not have been able to reach the rebel base
2. They probably didn't think any attack on the Death Star would succeed and weren't in a particular hurry

The distance between planets and moons is pretty big. Blowing up Yavin wouldn't immediately destroy Yavin 4. All you would do is create a debris field that would potential shield Yavin 4 and allow for the rebels to escape.


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CyricZ posted...

Also, since you had to go a specific route to get to Exegol, it makes sense that Lando had to lead them.

Except this contradicts the all at the same time. It would almost make sense for them to arrive one by one.

Either way you don't have a staging area and just chill while the fate of the galaxy is in balance. That would have been something you did before anyone got.there. And it ignores how lando just gets eveyone in a few minutes when we know hyperspace takes time and one of the few things the last two movies agree on is that no one is interested in the resistance or helping them.

CyricZ posted...

Like RotS has some fucking problems, but that's one of the lesser ones.

I don't think we could fit all the problems without hitting the character limit.

I can ignore because plot more than most but when it's the entire movie with no payoff. Ugggggggggg

HylianFox posted...

just a sad reminder that at one point the movies at least tried to make technical sense...

Honestly it really didn't, they just didn't have enough to contradict yet. Even in the first one you had the parsec being used as a measure of time. The not shooting the droid pods.force ghost is supposed to be difficult but every living jedi can do it. There are plenty of things in all the movies that happen because plot or it's cool looking.

Most of the explanations come from eu books.

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