StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Now that i have the OT DVD's I was watching ANH yesterday and I noticed something that just didn't seem right.

After escaping from Mos Eisley, the Falcon soars into orbit and Han says someting to the effect of "Looks like we have company. An Imperial Cruiser!" The two ships in pursuit were clearly ISD's. I've never heard of ISD's refered to as cruisers before. WTF?

Eh, I chalk it up to snap Id'ing. You know? like, it would have taken too much effort to say "Two Star Destroyers!" You know what I mean? same way turbolasers aren't really lasers, but they LOOK like lasers so snap stigma applies, and *poof* Star destroyers become cruisers.

See, and anyway, I, as Joe Snuffy civilian now, couldn't tell a destroyer from a Cruiser, either. Or from a Frigate or an AEGIS cruiser or some kind of ASW ship. So I would just call everything but a carrier or Battleship a cruiser, and I might even refer to a battleship as a battlecruiser. because to me, there's no difference, even though there IS a difference....Does that make any sense?

A few years ago (in 2001 to be more precise), I visited a site that dealt with discussions about Star Wars ship firepower etc. with the focus on ISD's and Corvettes. A page was also dedicated to ship nomenclature and designations. I saved the pages and forgot about it until the Inside the Worlds of Classic Star Wars came out since the site author did some speculation and proposed a classification system that turned out to be stunningly correct:

Star Corvette
Light Star Frigate [Light Patrol Cruiser]
Heavy Star Frigate [Heavy Patrol Cruiser]
Star Destroyer
Light Star Cruiser
Heavy Star Cruiser
Star Battle Cruiser
Star Battleship
Star Dreadnought
Command Ship

He then proposed an idea that:

The next theory says that the designation changes based on the assigned mission. So an ISD operating has a flagship for a force of Carracks and Strike's is a Battleship or Battlecruiser. While if it was escorting an Executor or similar ship it would be a Destroyer.

While this of course is only fan speculation, but in retrospect I think the guy made some good points.

BTW, that page could then be found at +http://www.angelfire.com/scifi/Imperial ... ations.htm but is off-line nowadays. Perhaps some of you remember that site (or even wrote it)? It would be cool to see it online again.

Col. Crackpot wrote:Now that i have the OT DVD's I was watching ANH yesterday and I noticed something that just didn't seem right.

After escaping from Mos Eisley, the Falcon soars into orbit and Han says someting to the effect of "Looks like we have company. An Imperial Cruiser!" The two ships in pursuit were clearly ISD's. I've never heard of ISD's refered to as cruisers before. WTF?

I guess you've missed all the flamefest debates we've had where a fair number of people say the ISD is a cruiser or even a battleship. Saxton has one side of the debate, but as it stands there is sufficent support that the term cruiser does apply repeatedly.

Not that anyone cares, but in the "Descriptive Audio" presentation of SW: ANH on VHS (for the visually impaired), it describes the ISD's as "Imperial cruisers" or "battle cruisers."

Incidentally in ESB, Leia points to the Executor and says "Star Destroyer."

So yeah, I'd go with the snap I.D. thing.

Of course Han was a former Imperial.


He may have been simply stating the true mission of the ship. In Empire he says "i see them... two Star Destroyers coming right at us."

So han In ANH hope simply stated the role the ship generally plays. The Ship has several funtions one of which is to act as a main line battleship.

Ahm, Han says next "There are two more. They want to cut off our escape". (I don't know if the spelling is correct). Maybe there is a cruiser and two star destroyers?

It seems more likely he was just using slang to get the message across quickly.

Since the term 'cruiser' is used to describe a variety of ship classes in SW, I don't think it really detracts from the ISD's main role, or casts it into doubt.

Tribun wrote:Ahm, Han says next "There are two more. They want to cut off our escape". (I don't know if the spelling is correct). Maybe there is a cruiser and two star destroyers?

no he doesn't. What he added was:
"i see them... two Star Destroyers coming right at us."

Stofsk wrote:Since the term 'cruiser' is used to describe a variety of ship classes in SW, I don't think it really detracts from the ISD's main role, or casts it into doubt.

or perhaps the non millitary minds of the writers callling anything with guns a cruiser. I dunno, it just stuck out. It seems i cant watch sci-fi anything anymore without being drawn to minutae that has debate value.

Mange the Swede wrote:BTW, that page could then be found at +http://www.angelfire.com/scifi/Imperial ... ations.htm but is off-line nowadays. Perhaps some of you remember that site (or even wrote it)? It would be cool to see it online again.

The site is online when I write this..

the Novelization version fo the event describes around five (maybe six depending onhow you interpret things) ships total trying to catch the Falcon, composed of cruisers and destroyers. If you take "cruisers" literally (and there is a good deal of contention on that) that means there were three cruisers. The novel also mentions "two, maybe three destroyers" for a total of five ships.

Whether or not what we saw onscreen was a destroyer or cruiser is also up for debate.

Kurgan wrote:Not that anyone cares, but in the "Descriptive Audio" presentation of SW: ANH on VHS (for the visually impaired), it describes the ISD's as "Imperial cruisers" or "battle cruisers."

Incidentally in ESB, Leia points to the Executor and says "Star Destroyer."

So yeah, I'd go with the snap I.D. thing.

The Executor has been labeled a "Star Destroyer" in many sources, including canon ones, thats nothing new. We also know that there are other ships labeled as "Star Destroyers" that are of vastly different size from the mile long "destroyer" as well. Its one of the more obvious problems the whole "Star-class" designation theory.

Mange the Swede wrote: While this of course is only fan speculation, but in retrospect I think the guy made some good points.

BTW, that page could then be found at +http://www.angelfire.com/scifi/Imperial ... ations.htm but is off-line nowadays. Perhaps some of you remember that site (or even wrote it)? It would be cool to see it online again.

Wow I didn't know anyone ever bothered to read that site. The Yard is still online though I haven't updated it in forever and I'm not planning on doing so in the future as I created it using the lowest SW numbers I could accept and since ICS came out the site has no real purpose. I also forget it existed till a couple months ago when I saw the link on the archive.