On Executor
Posted: 2005-04-26 02:43pm
I just cooked this post up on another board, and I thought I'd cross-post it and see if it was comprehensive.
On HIMS Executor:
That said, the Executor-class warship is both a Super Star Destroyer and a Star Dreadnought. Filmic canon – The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi – indisputably dubs His Imperial Majesty's Ship Executor an “Imperial Star Destroyer,” a “Super Star Destroyer,” and a “command ship,” by Princess Leia and Lord Darth Vader, Admiral Ackbar, and Han Solo and Emperor Palpatine respectively. The anonymous third-person omniscient narrator of The Empire Strikes Back novelisation also describes the vessel as an “Imperial Star Destroyer.”
The Marvel STAR WARS run described the Executor whilst still under construction as resembling a “battlecruiser,” “the largest [3PO] had ever seen.” A nearly constructed Executor resembles a superlatively large battlecruiser to a counterrevolutionary protocol droid.
Inside the Worlds of the Star Wars Trilogy by Dr. Curtis Saxton, Ph.D., describes HIMS Executor curiously (in my opinion) as a “star dreadnought.” The selfsame source refers to “Super Star Destroyer” as rebels’ slang and a catch-all colloquialism for all vessels ranging from “star cruisers to ultimate star dreadnoughts like Executor.”
Now, Admiral Ackbar certainly qualifies as a rebel, although he is CinC for the Alliance to Restore the Republic and served as a personal slave/servant to a Grand Moff Oversectorial Governor, Wilhuff Tarkin. While it may be somewhat odd that Admiral Ackbar would choose to use such nonspecific slang (as the term is described by ItWoAotC) to refer to the Executor considering his background, it is not impossible, particularly in the heat and excitement of battle, and certainly does not constitute an explicit contradiction. The ItWoAotC description appears to stand.
Other uses of the term “Super Star Destroyer” appear to support this description of the term. The New Essential Guide to Characters by Daniel Wallace refers to HIMS Vengeance as a “Super Star Destroyer variant,” despite the fact that it is grossly outmassed by the Executor and has an entirely different hull reaching approximately 10 kilometers, as opposed to HIMS Executor’s 17.6-19.2 (19?) km. The Dark Empire trade paperback contains a panel referring to HIMS Allegiance as a “Super Star Destroyer”, although it is large warship which appears to scale proportionally to 2.2 km.
“Imperial Star Destroyer” is another descriptor. However, the selfsame films and novelisation also describe Imperator/Imperial-class Star Destroyers as “Imperial Star Destroyers,” while the Expanded Universe has referred frequently to Victory-class Star Destroyers by the generic “Star Destroyer” (ref: Shadows of the Empire, Wedge’s Gamble) and much more powerful and large vessels like the mighty Shockwave from Darksaber. This would suggest contextually that “Imperial Star Destroyer” and “Star Destroyer” is conjecturally itself used (though not necessarily officially, formally, or exclusively) as a catch-all term for large, major human-designed and built warships.
Dr. Saxton uses the term “dreadnought,” in his description, which is odd. The term dreadnought in real world naval terms grew to distinguish HMS Dreadnought and her similarly unique successors from previous types of battleship. Dreadnoughts deployed batteries containing uniform caliber of guns (all largest) and using sophisticated technology to present a -much- faster and better protected battleship than slow predecessors with mixed caliber batteries. This does not seem to operate analogously in STAR WARS. Superficial examination of the films across nearly 40 years shows no appreciable technological advances, and Attack of the Clones Incredible Cross-Sections confirms that the galactic civilization has settled into a state of developmental, political, and technological stasis. The term “dreadnought” seems misplaced in such a setting, as itself arose at a descriminating term between different phases of technological development implemented in existing warships.
Extrinsically, it appears Dr. Saxton is trying to avoid maligning the status or associations that his "star dreadnought" might have acquired if termed perhaps more appropriately, a “battleship.” For the filmic canon has already identified the split-ring converted-frieghter Lucrehulk-class “battleships” (or fleet carriers more appropriately by observed and obvious role). It appears to be for similar reasons that the intermediate dreadnought-destroyer vessels thusfar identified have been deemed “star battlecruisers,” despite the fact that true battlecruisers in history were frequently larger and just as heavily armed as contemporaneous battleships, not lesser. However, "cruiser" is a heavily abused descriptor in the STAR WARS Expanded Universe, and those minimalist connotations he doubtlessly sought to avoid.
In any case, “dreadnought” would at least indicate a form of battleship, and judging from the Executor’s superlative mass, length, and prestige compared to the grandeur adopted by real-life battleships, this appears superficially appropriate.
The Marvel use of “large battlecruiser” also does not seem odd for the same reasons: HMS Hood was a late-model battlecruiser, and represented both the prestige and volume zenith of the Royal Navy from its construction in 1918 till it’s sinking under the guns of KMS Bismarck in the Denmark Strait in 1941. Like a battlecruiser, HIMS Executor seems to display rather limited visible protection compared to many smaller designs; her armored bow is cut to expose a rather large ventral cortex, an enormous ventral bay, and to allow her large-diameter engines to fit into the hull. Particularly the last item of these sacrifices seems to reflect sacrificing armor for greater propulsion – a defining characteristic of the battlecruiser. She has also been implied to be rather agile compared to small vessels. Executor participated with the rest of DEATHRON in chasing down leads to the Alliance's hidden headquarters. This meant the Executor was expected to keep pace with her Imperator-class Star Destroyer escorts and be able to lay siege to an enemy base as soon as intelligence data was retrieved. It also chased down escaping rebels from the Battle of Hoth, as well as chasing the Death Star II plans from Kothlis. All of these would suggest parity with the Imperator's speed, which is exceptional for a battleship and warship of Executor's bulk. The Executor has consistently been portrayed with unusually low protection and firepower taking into account her mass. Being designed a battlecruiser may describe elements of that, but armament revisions and a lack of comparative data from another similar sized “typical” warship make conclusions impossible, and leaving only conjecture.
The simultaneous use of “dreadnought” (or “battleship”) and “battlecruiser” is not necessarily self-contradicting. HMS Invincible was originally to be deemed a “dreadnought cruiser” before being styled a “battle cruiser.” Late-model battlecruisers like the planned USS Lexington and HMS Hood mounted much heavier armor and approached similar protection and armament as contemporaneous battleships. Later, very large heavy cruisers such as Deutschland-class Panzerschiff (“armored ship”) deployed by the Kriegsmarine were identified at varying times as “pocket battleships” or “battlecruisers,” and indeed, they were designed along the same “kill what can outrun you, outrun what you cannot kill” philosophy as the battlecruiser of the Great War. The Kongo-class fast battleships of the Imperial Japanese Navy were rebuilt/rearmored battlecruisers. The Gneisenau-class were deemed battlecruisers by the Royal Navy, but they traded heavy armament for speed and range, and maintained armor commiserate with contemporaneous battleships; they could be more accurately described as “light battleships”. Later fast battleships, especially the Iowa-class fast battleships, were actually poorly protected against armament equivalent to their own (like the original battlecruisers) and were enlarged for great speed. Iowa depended on her much-superior fire-control to engage enemy warships outside their engagement envelope to survive, not her armor.
The canonical description of “command ship” is not in dispute. The former Imperial officer speaking in a calming tone, and the Imperial Sovereign is not excited or irrational or hurried. They are both reliable and in reliable states of mind. It also fits with observation: HIMS Executor directs DEATHRON and the search and blockade efforts in The Empire Strikes Back and directs the security cordon and then the fleet action in Return of the Jedi. The Expanded Universe shows the Executor-class to be serving as a flagship for ADM Pelleaon, Warlord Zsinj, GEN Antilles, ADM Daala, Viceroy Nil Spaar, GADM Osvald Teshik, and others.
In terms of observation of role, the Executor displays herself both in form and practice in The Empire Strikes Back as a fleet carrier. The Blizzard Force of elite cold-environment assault troopers and their attendant armored vehicles were delivered from HIMS Executor. The vessel has an enormous bay, which, according to Darksaber, can deploy at least “thousands” of fighters. No doubt it contains proportionally large numbers of armored and scout vehicles, troop transports, vehicle dropships, assault transports, shuttles, utility transports, landing craft, and gunboats relative to the typical Star Destroyer.
So what is the Executor-class?
She is a fast battleship (or possibly a well-armored battlecruiser) that doubles as a fleet carrier/command ship and is able to maintain pace with attendant destroyers and to engage heavy warships and direct battle equally proficiently. In practice, she is apparently a relatively unabundant prestige flagship which is typically deployed alone, directing a fleet of much smaller vessels in a particular mission. However, there is nothing to say the ship cannot or does not operate in groups; Warlord Zsinj evidentally sought to pair HIMS Razor's Kiss with his Iron Fist, and BLACKSWORDCOM comprehended three Executor-class warships, and probably an additional "star dreadnought" of similar scale, role, and power with an experimental propulsion system.
The official designators and descriptors are not contradictory when taken in their relative contexts.
On HIMS Executor:
That said, the Executor-class warship is both a Super Star Destroyer and a Star Dreadnought. Filmic canon – The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi – indisputably dubs His Imperial Majesty's Ship Executor an “Imperial Star Destroyer,” a “Super Star Destroyer,” and a “command ship,” by Princess Leia and Lord Darth Vader, Admiral Ackbar, and Han Solo and Emperor Palpatine respectively. The anonymous third-person omniscient narrator of The Empire Strikes Back novelisation also describes the vessel as an “Imperial Star Destroyer.”
The Marvel STAR WARS run described the Executor whilst still under construction as resembling a “battlecruiser,” “the largest [3PO] had ever seen.” A nearly constructed Executor resembles a superlatively large battlecruiser to a counterrevolutionary protocol droid.
Inside the Worlds of the Star Wars Trilogy by Dr. Curtis Saxton, Ph.D., describes HIMS Executor curiously (in my opinion) as a “star dreadnought.” The selfsame source refers to “Super Star Destroyer” as rebels’ slang and a catch-all colloquialism for all vessels ranging from “star cruisers to ultimate star dreadnoughts like Executor.”
Now, Admiral Ackbar certainly qualifies as a rebel, although he is CinC for the Alliance to Restore the Republic and served as a personal slave/servant to a Grand Moff Oversectorial Governor, Wilhuff Tarkin. While it may be somewhat odd that Admiral Ackbar would choose to use such nonspecific slang (as the term is described by ItWoAotC) to refer to the Executor considering his background, it is not impossible, particularly in the heat and excitement of battle, and certainly does not constitute an explicit contradiction. The ItWoAotC description appears to stand.
Other uses of the term “Super Star Destroyer” appear to support this description of the term. The New Essential Guide to Characters by Daniel Wallace refers to HIMS Vengeance as a “Super Star Destroyer variant,” despite the fact that it is grossly outmassed by the Executor and has an entirely different hull reaching approximately 10 kilometers, as opposed to HIMS Executor’s 17.6-19.2 (19?) km. The Dark Empire trade paperback contains a panel referring to HIMS Allegiance as a “Super Star Destroyer”, although it is large warship which appears to scale proportionally to 2.2 km.
“Imperial Star Destroyer” is another descriptor. However, the selfsame films and novelisation also describe Imperator/Imperial-class Star Destroyers as “Imperial Star Destroyers,” while the Expanded Universe has referred frequently to Victory-class Star Destroyers by the generic “Star Destroyer” (ref: Shadows of the Empire, Wedge’s Gamble) and much more powerful and large vessels like the mighty Shockwave from Darksaber. This would suggest contextually that “Imperial Star Destroyer” and “Star Destroyer” is conjecturally itself used (though not necessarily officially, formally, or exclusively) as a catch-all term for large, major human-designed and built warships.
Dr. Saxton uses the term “dreadnought,” in his description, which is odd. The term dreadnought in real world naval terms grew to distinguish HMS Dreadnought and her similarly unique successors from previous types of battleship. Dreadnoughts deployed batteries containing uniform caliber of guns (all largest) and using sophisticated technology to present a -much- faster and better protected battleship than slow predecessors with mixed caliber batteries. This does not seem to operate analogously in STAR WARS. Superficial examination of the films across nearly 40 years shows no appreciable technological advances, and Attack of the Clones Incredible Cross-Sections confirms that the galactic civilization has settled into a state of developmental, political, and technological stasis. The term “dreadnought” seems misplaced in such a setting, as itself arose at a descriminating term between different phases of technological development implemented in existing warships.
Extrinsically, it appears Dr. Saxton is trying to avoid maligning the status or associations that his "star dreadnought" might have acquired if termed perhaps more appropriately, a “battleship.” For the filmic canon has already identified the split-ring converted-frieghter Lucrehulk-class “battleships” (or fleet carriers more appropriately by observed and obvious role). It appears to be for similar reasons that the intermediate dreadnought-destroyer vessels thusfar identified have been deemed “star battlecruisers,” despite the fact that true battlecruisers in history were frequently larger and just as heavily armed as contemporaneous battleships, not lesser. However, "cruiser" is a heavily abused descriptor in the STAR WARS Expanded Universe, and those minimalist connotations he doubtlessly sought to avoid.
In any case, “dreadnought” would at least indicate a form of battleship, and judging from the Executor’s superlative mass, length, and prestige compared to the grandeur adopted by real-life battleships, this appears superficially appropriate.
The Marvel use of “large battlecruiser” also does not seem odd for the same reasons: HMS Hood was a late-model battlecruiser, and represented both the prestige and volume zenith of the Royal Navy from its construction in 1918 till it’s sinking under the guns of KMS Bismarck in the Denmark Strait in 1941. Like a battlecruiser, HIMS Executor seems to display rather limited visible protection compared to many smaller designs; her armored bow is cut to expose a rather large ventral cortex, an enormous ventral bay, and to allow her large-diameter engines to fit into the hull. Particularly the last item of these sacrifices seems to reflect sacrificing armor for greater propulsion – a defining characteristic of the battlecruiser. She has also been implied to be rather agile compared to small vessels. Executor participated with the rest of DEATHRON in chasing down leads to the Alliance's hidden headquarters. This meant the Executor was expected to keep pace with her Imperator-class Star Destroyer escorts and be able to lay siege to an enemy base as soon as intelligence data was retrieved. It also chased down escaping rebels from the Battle of Hoth, as well as chasing the Death Star II plans from Kothlis. All of these would suggest parity with the Imperator's speed, which is exceptional for a battleship and warship of Executor's bulk. The Executor has consistently been portrayed with unusually low protection and firepower taking into account her mass. Being designed a battlecruiser may describe elements of that, but armament revisions and a lack of comparative data from another similar sized “typical” warship make conclusions impossible, and leaving only conjecture.
The simultaneous use of “dreadnought” (or “battleship”) and “battlecruiser” is not necessarily self-contradicting. HMS Invincible was originally to be deemed a “dreadnought cruiser” before being styled a “battle cruiser.” Late-model battlecruisers like the planned USS Lexington and HMS Hood mounted much heavier armor and approached similar protection and armament as contemporaneous battleships. Later, very large heavy cruisers such as Deutschland-class Panzerschiff (“armored ship”) deployed by the Kriegsmarine were identified at varying times as “pocket battleships” or “battlecruisers,” and indeed, they were designed along the same “kill what can outrun you, outrun what you cannot kill” philosophy as the battlecruiser of the Great War. The Kongo-class fast battleships of the Imperial Japanese Navy were rebuilt/rearmored battlecruisers. The Gneisenau-class were deemed battlecruisers by the Royal Navy, but they traded heavy armament for speed and range, and maintained armor commiserate with contemporaneous battleships; they could be more accurately described as “light battleships”. Later fast battleships, especially the Iowa-class fast battleships, were actually poorly protected against armament equivalent to their own (like the original battlecruisers) and were enlarged for great speed. Iowa depended on her much-superior fire-control to engage enemy warships outside their engagement envelope to survive, not her armor.
The canonical description of “command ship” is not in dispute. The former Imperial officer speaking in a calming tone, and the Imperial Sovereign is not excited or irrational or hurried. They are both reliable and in reliable states of mind. It also fits with observation: HIMS Executor directs DEATHRON and the search and blockade efforts in The Empire Strikes Back and directs the security cordon and then the fleet action in Return of the Jedi. The Expanded Universe shows the Executor-class to be serving as a flagship for ADM Pelleaon, Warlord Zsinj, GEN Antilles, ADM Daala, Viceroy Nil Spaar, GADM Osvald Teshik, and others.
In terms of observation of role, the Executor displays herself both in form and practice in The Empire Strikes Back as a fleet carrier. The Blizzard Force of elite cold-environment assault troopers and their attendant armored vehicles were delivered from HIMS Executor. The vessel has an enormous bay, which, according to Darksaber, can deploy at least “thousands” of fighters. No doubt it contains proportionally large numbers of armored and scout vehicles, troop transports, vehicle dropships, assault transports, shuttles, utility transports, landing craft, and gunboats relative to the typical Star Destroyer.
So what is the Executor-class?
She is a fast battleship (or possibly a well-armored battlecruiser) that doubles as a fleet carrier/command ship and is able to maintain pace with attendant destroyers and to engage heavy warships and direct battle equally proficiently. In practice, she is apparently a relatively unabundant prestige flagship which is typically deployed alone, directing a fleet of much smaller vessels in a particular mission. However, there is nothing to say the ship cannot or does not operate in groups; Warlord Zsinj evidentally sought to pair HIMS Razor's Kiss with his Iron Fist, and BLACKSWORDCOM comprehended three Executor-class warships, and probably an additional "star dreadnought" of similar scale, role, and power with an experimental propulsion system.
The official designators and descriptors are not contradictory when taken in their relative contexts.
