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If Leia knows something is up with the Empire letting them escape from the Death Star, and surmises that they're being tracked, why does she let Han take the Falcon back to Yavin when she could have transferred ship and gotten the plans back to the Rebellion (assuming she didn't have a way to transmit the plans to Yavin) without showing the Rebellions' hand and thus also, hopefully, giving them more time to plan an assault on the Death Star with more forces than a mere handful of whatever fighters they could find last minute?

She didn't know as such, she suspected that was the case. Han brashly assured her that the Falcon couldn't be tracked. He may have also refused to stop off somewhere else because he wanted to get paid and any deviation from that route might get him upset. He is a pirate after all.

So blame Han, it's all his fault.

Leia was bold faced caught as a traitor by Vader. She was then detained and torutured and slated to be executed on the top secret battlestation that she saw obliterate a major planet in the Empire.

Where in the galaxy COULD she go? She'd be picked up in a second if she landed on any civilized planet and try to charter a ship to another location.

As the old saying goes; she's seen too much.

Knife wrote:Where in the galaxy COULD she go? She'd be picked up in a second if she landed on any civilized planet and try to charter a ship to another location.

As the old saying goes; she's seen too much.

Why would she know the location of other Rebel cells as well? Such resistance movements have to be decentralised in order to survive. Perhaps Yavin IV really was the only place she could go. (and trust a Pirate to take her around the galaxy? Even if he did technically save her life, Han revealed his mercenary attitude to her in the cockpit - would you take the chance someone like that wouldn't sell you to the highest bidder?)

No, if you remember she knew of the base on Dantooine, which Tarkin already knew about.

General Schatten wrote:No, if you remember she knew of the base on Dantooine, which Tarkin already knew about.

That the same place that was crawling with Imperials five seconds after she dropped the name to Tarkin?

Stofsk wrote:

General Schatten wrote:No, if you remember she knew of the base on Dantooine, which Tarkin already knew about.

That the same place that was crawling with Imperials five seconds after she dropped the name to Tarkin?

I think what he meant was that she knew of other Rebel bases. I dont think he was trying to say she could go there.

We know she knew of Dantooine, but that's it. Like I said, she's the leader of her rebel cell, so she'd know where her cell is but not the others (it's safer that way, she WAS captured and tortured after all).

Stofsk wrote:We know she knew of Dantooine, but that's it. Like I said, she's the leader of her rebel cell, so she'd know where her cell is but not the others (it's safer that way, she WAS captured and tortured after all).

"Her resistance to the mind probe is considerable. It will be some time before we can extract any information from her."

Vader didn't get anything from her about the rebellion. Also if Dantooine was her cell why had it been deserted for "some time"? The events of ANH take place over what, like 2 weeks at the most? I would think that "some time" is longer than a couple of weeks. Also if Dantooine was her cell and they knew she was captured then how would she have known to go to Yavin IV? If that was a predetermined rendevous that she knew about, wouldn't they have gone somewhere else when she was captured?

On the other hand perhaps they believed what the senate was told that all aboard the Tantive IV were killed.

I think though, that TESB makes it clear that the rebellion doesn't have "cells" and that they stay together as one big group. Also, when GL wrote the story I don't think that he had any idea about "cells" the way we think and know about them now.

havokeff wrote:Vader didn't get anything from her about the rebellion. Also if Dantooine was her cell why had it been deserted for "some time"?

Her cell was at Yavin, they were previously at Dantooine. Or an alternate interpretation, Yavin was always the secret base (it looks like it had been established for awhile) while Dantooine was just a minor base.

The events of ANH take place over what, like 2 weeks at the most? I would think that "some time" is longer than a couple of weeks.

It takes place over a period of days, if that. 'Some time' can mean anything.

Also if Dantooine was her cell and they knew she was captured then how would she have known to go to Yavin IV? If that was a predetermined rendevous that she knew about, wouldn't they have gone somewhere else when she was captured?

Dantooine wasn't the main base, it was never the main base, it was at most a minor base that Leia knew to have been abandoned so that she could drop it to Tarkin.

I think though, that TESB makes it clear that the rebellion doesn't have "cells" and that they stay together as one big group.

Then you'd be wrong, because ESB says nothing of the kind. Where was Admiral Ackbar's hotdog ships? Nowhere to be seen. ROTJ - both the movie and the novelisation - outright says that the Rebels are larger than we'd previously been aware of.

Also, when GL wrote the story I don't think that he had any idea about "cells" the way we think and know about them now.

Why not? Resistance cells are part and parcel of insurgency and revolutionary movements, they were certainly common enough for someone like George Lucas to be clued into them. 'Cells' weren't invented post-Star Wars.

Why then. does the ESB crawl say:

Although the Death
Star has been destroyed,
Imperial troops have driven the
Rebel forces from their hidden
base and pursued them across
the galaxy.
Evading the dreaded Imperial
Starfleet, a group of freedom
fighters led by Luke Skywalker
have established a new secret
base on the remote ice world
of Hoth.

A group, not the entire Alliance.

Also, when GL wrote the story I don't think that he had any idea about "cells" the way we think and know about them now.

In the cut dialogue from ROTJ, Obi-Wan refers to Leia as "leader of her cell in the Alliance".

And there's the small fact that the Rebel fleet in ROTJ had to be assembled. Why would that be necessary unless it was split into individual forces?

Straha wrote:If Leia knows something is up with the Empire letting them escape from the Death Star, and surmises that they're being tracked, why does she let Han take the Falcon back to Yavin when she could have transferred ship and gotten the plans back to the Rebellion (assuming she didn't have a way to transmit the plans to Yavin) without showing the Rebellions' hand and thus also, hopefully, giving them more time to plan an assault on the Death Star with more forces than a mere handful of whatever fighters they could find last minute?

The Empire controls long-range communications, so she probably couldn't transmit the plans to Yavin; she had to deliver R2 in person. The Empire had undoubtedly circulated her description and the description of the Falcon, so she would have had difficulty stopping at any other spaceport to switch ship. She really had no place to go but a Rebel base, and Yavin was probably the only one she knew how to find.

Even if she did have a place she could switch ships, she'd just be bringing the Empire down on someone else's head. Tarkin had already demonstrated that the guilt or innocence of a population meant little to him; any sympathy toward the Rebellion at all (such as helping Leia switch ships) could be sufficient to label a planet's population "collaborators" and earn them a Death Star blast. Taking the plans somewhere they could be analyzed for a weakness that might be exploited was a more ethical choice for her.

havokeff wrote:I think though, that TESB makes it clear that the rebellion doesn't have "cells" and that they stay together as one big group. Also, when GL wrote the story I don't think that he had any idea about "cells" the way we think and know about them now.

I think the Rebellion has "cells", yet it still has a central point of organization that has contact information for all those cells and governing authority (much as Osama bin Laden is believed to still have such information for the Al Quaeda network). That's what the Empire was after, and that was the base that had moved from Dantooine to Yavin IV to Hoth.

Considering her position and her father's, Leia as a 'binLaden' figure makes a lot of sense.

Her cell was at Yavin, they were previously at Dantooine.

I always figured she was with the Alderaan cell, but had to go to Yavin after Alderaan was destroyed.

havokeff wrote:The events of ANH take place over what, like 2 weeks at the most?

Depends on how much time passed between R2 and 3P0 landing on Tatooine and being purchased by the Lars. After that, its like three DAYS. Luke cleans R2, "finds" the recording and removes R2's resrtaining bolt. That night R2 bolts. The next morning Luke goes looking for R2, meets Kenobi, finds his aunt and uncle dead and goes to Mos Eisley. Its probably a couple hour trip to Alderaan. And then they spend maybe an hour running around on the Death Star. After that its straight to Yavin

The Original Nex wrote:

Her cell was at Yavin, they were previously at Dantooine.

I always figured she was with the Alderaan cell, but had to go to Yavin after Alderaan was destroyed.

I always thought that, too. Obviously, Alderaan had enough dissenters to warrant their own faction, and I got the impression that General Dodonna was the leader of the Yavin cell.

I had thought that Leia was a courier between cells, using her status as Senator and Royalty to bypass Imperial troops. More of a spy than anything else.

LadyTevar wrote:I had thought that Leia was a courier between cells, using her status as Senator and Royalty to bypass Imperial troops. More of a spy than anything else.

Likely. Bail was probably the head of the Alderaan faction.

Noble Ire wrote:

The Original Nex wrote:

Her cell was at Yavin, they were previously at Dantooine.

I always figured she was with the Alderaan cell, but had to go to Yavin after Alderaan was destroyed.

I always thought that, too. Obviously, Alderaan had enough dissenters to warrant their own faction, and I got the impression that General Dodonna was the leader of the Yavin cell.

I see no reason why Dodanna can't be the military or operational leader of an Alderanian cell. Nothing says that they have to be a citizen of Alderaan to be part of their cell. Bail had almost twenty years to recruit and put together his forces.

As far as the original question, where else did Leia have to go?

Anywhere she head will get a superlaser blast up its rear. Even if the chance is remote better to lead the empre to a place where an attack on the Death Star can be made. Sure it may mean the end of the Rebellion, but its at least a target that will avoid further needless deaths.

Isolder74 wrote:As far as the original question, where else did Leia have to go?

Anywhere she head will get a superlaser blast up its rear. Even if the chance is remote better to lead the empre to a place where an attack on the Death Star can be made. Sure it may mean the end of the Rebellion, but its at least a target that will avoid further needless deaths.

This, I think, is the closest to the truth. If allowed to proceed, the DS will probably start picking off civilized systems, one after another, until the rebels either surrender or destroy it. The latter is most unlikely, if the tracking device is somehow found and negated; how do you get your fighters to the DS again?

No, the only way to get a shot to destroy the DS is to lure it to Yavin, analyze the plans and hope for the best. The difference between executing this plan (and having it fail) and living to fight another day is probably a few weeks for the Rebellion.

I concede all points of my post as I was about 8 or 9 shots deep in a bottle of JD (not to mention the beers) when I posted. I seemed so smart at the time Drinking and posting don't mix!!

What about Cloud City, or was Lando already under Vader's thumb?

Yogi wrote:What about Cloud City, or was Lando already under Vader's thumb?

I don't think that Cloud City was under Imperial control at that point, but that's rather beside the point. Putting aside the fact that Leia had never heard of Lando or Cloud City before and that Han was relucant to meet with him even when it was their only option, the result would be the same as traveling to any world that wasn't directly under Imperial rule; the Death Star would catch up with them soon after their arrival, and the Falcon would just have to jump away again. The only outcome of the strategy would be raised suspicions of Lando's potential Rebel sympathies; the Imperial take-over would either take place sooner, or the Death Star might even destroy Bespin, Cloud City and all, as a lesson to other sympathetic colonies.