What plot holes are in the original trilogy

[Metahive]

Did you miss the bit where the Emperor explains everything has been his plan all along? He leaked the code and Vader was on hand to let the shuttle through in case a lackey got trigger happy. His plan was to bring Luke to a point of maximum despair as all his friends died about him.
Not the brightest of plans, but as it's been pointed out already Palps was a cackling villian of the old school.

It was his plan to lure the rebel fleet to Endor and he already managed to do this before Han and his commando even climbed into the shuttle and took off. As long as the shield installation stays intact the shuttle might as well not touch upon the Sanctuary Moon (not Endor itself, damn slippage) at all.

[Galvatron]

Here's a plot hole (assuming that's even the right term) I just thought of: why did it take Ben three years to finally send Luke to Dagobah? Why not tell him to go immediately after the Battle of Yavin?

"The Force will be with you always. Oh, and by the way, you must to go to the Dagobah system. There you will learn from Yoda. The Jedi master who instructed me."

[Bakustra]

Here's a plot hole I just thought of: why did it take Ben three years to finally send Luke to Dagobah? Why not tell him to go immediately after the Battle of Yavin?

"The Force will be with you always. Oh, and by the way, you must to go to the Dagobah system. There you will learn from Yoda. The Jedi master who instructed me."

It took him that long to talk Yoda into letting Luke come?

More seriously, it may be that it was difficult for him to talk to Luke before Luke got some training on Dagobah. He talks to Luke during moments of deep emotion (his death, concentrating on the trench, blowing up the Death Star) and when Luke is dying he appears in the ghostly flesh, but flickers. So he may not have been able to talk to Luke at all until that time, because Luke just wasn't in the right frame of mind and was untrained.

[Srelex]

Perhaps they simply decided that having Luke go through some rebel work first would harden him up, save them some trouble.

[Wyrm]

It was his plan to lure the rebel fleet to Endor and he already managed to do this before Han and his commando even climbed into the shuttle and took off.

Anyone who's seen the movie knows this is not true. The rebel fleet didn't arrive at Endor until at least a local day after Han and company slipped through the shield. It's not even a viable plan to begin with.

Han: "Shuttle Tyderian requesting landing clearance on the forest moon."
Shield Ops: "Are you daft, man? Don't you see the big space battle outside with the rebels duking it out with our fleet?"
Han: "Hey, I got a schedule to keep, you know. Just let me through."
Shield Ops: "I don't think so. If we do that, the rebel fleet has clear shot of the shield generator! Say, wasn't there a report of a Lambda-class launching from a rebel carrier?"
Han: "Um, well..."
Shield Ops: "Fire Control, I have a target for you."

[Stofsk]

Perhaps they simply decided that having Luke go through some rebel work first would harden him up, save them some trouble.

He came within inches of death's grasp several times on Hoth. If Han had been a few minutes slower he might have frozen to death. If the AT-AT gunner had been that much better that blaster bolt would have gone through his cockpit rather than glance a hit off his snowspeeder. If the AT-AT had been quicker too or if he hadn't recovered from the crash as fast as he did he might also have been crushed underneath the walker's foot.

EDIT: what i'm trying to say is if they wanted to harden him up, they could have done so at Dagobah in a safer way.

[Metahive]

It was his plan to lure the rebel fleet to Endor and he already managed to do this before Han and his commando even climbed into the shuttle and took off.

Anyone who's seen the movie knows this is not true. The rebel fleet didn't arrive at Endor until at least a local day after Han and company slipped through the shield. It's not even a viable plan to begin with.

Han: "Shuttle Tyderian requesting landing clearance on the forest moon."
Shield Ops: "Are you daft, man? Don't you see the big space battle outside with the rebels duking it out with our fleet?"
Han: "Hey, I got a schedule to keep, you know. Just let me through."
Shield Ops: "I don't think so. If we do that, the rebel fleet has clear shot of the shield generator! Say, wasn't there a report of a Lambda-class launching from a rebel carrier?"
Han: "Um, well..."
Shield Ops: "Fire Control, I have a target for you."

What I meant was that the Alliance was already poised to strike at the Death Star II before Han's commando was sent off. They were not making their attack dependent on Han's success, they simply followed a strict schedule.

[Wyrm]

What I meant was that the Alliance was already poised to strike at the Death Star II before Han's commando was sent off. They were not making their attack dependent on Han's success, they simply followed a strict schedule.

How could there be such a strict schedule when the rebels could not have known that the code they stole might not have already been invalidated? If the code didn't work, which is certainly possible — the reports of the stolen shuttle had plenty of time to filter through the Imperial holonet — then the entire mission is dead in the water. So if the Rebel fleet was relying on a fixed schedule, and the trap had fully closed before Han entered the shuttle, you have two plot holes to explain: the one you identified of letting the shuttle touch down in the first place, and the one where the Rebels knew their code was not invalidated even though there was the distinct possibility it was.

However, if there was even a single bit of information going back to the Rebel fleet, both holes are plugged up quite nicely: a "Go/No Go" signal, indicating that the shuttle did indeed get through the shield and land safely. The plan could proceed at that point, and it explains Palpy letting through the shuttle.

[Metahive]

However, if there was even a single bit of information going back to the Rebel fleet, both holes are plugged up quite nicely: a "Go/No Go" signal, indicating that the shuttle did indeed get through the shield and land safely. The plan could proceed at that point, and it explains Palpy letting through the shuttle.

That's of course a valid rationalization, problem is none of that is in any way mentioned in the movie. Nothing about a possible dead-man switch or a beacon or something like that. All we get is according to the dialog something like "In so and so much hours we presume you accomplished something an we'll move in with the fleet. If you somehow failed because the Imperials set a trap and just blasted your commando out of the sky, well, we'll simply turn around and flee".
Hence, the Empire letting the shuttle land instead of destroying or capturing it in space constitutes a plot hole.

[Wyrm]

However, if there was even a single bit of information going back to the Rebel fleet, both holes are plugged up quite nicely: a "Go/No Go" signal, indicating that the shuttle did indeed get through the shield and land safely. The plan could proceed at that point, and it explains Palpy letting through the shuttle. Nothing about a possible dead-man switch or a beacon or something like that.

That's of course a valid rationalization, problem is none of that is in any way mentioned in the movie.

The movie is a dramatization, not a complete mission spec for the Rebel assault. Since the entire mission hinges on getting through the shield, a "Go/No Go" condition would be a basic requirement that would cut out a lot of uncertainty in the mission — if the shuttle failed to get through the shield, then the mission is a wash anyway, and you'd like to know this fact before you rush in to assault a target you can't possibly destroy. Checking that the shuttle reported in at the specified time, and signals "Go" to indicate it got through the shield helps you decide whether or not to commit your forces to attacking the Death Star II at this time, try to come up with another strategy (you may have to settle for destroying the Death Star at a later date, without Palpy aboard as a bonus), or even pussy out completely and disband the Rebellion. Sure, it's cowardly, but you'll be alive.

There's also the point that even if the Rebels were idiots and didn't do this, Palpy likely had no way of knowing this given his precognition. He might have seen the Rebel fleet at his Death Star II, and a rebel band making an assault on the shield generator beforehand, but nothing specific about whether their equipment included an FTL comm or that their mission included a "Go/No Go" signal. He would probably have asked some of his military advisers what they would do if they managed this trick, and amongst the answers would be a "Go/No Go" signal. Since he would figure it is likely that the Rebel band landing on the planet is a prerequisite to his vision of the future to be accurate, he's not going to mess with that and plan accordingly. So your plot hole requires incompetence on both the Rebels' part and the Imperials' part.

All we get is according to the dialog something like "In so and so much hours we presume you accomplished something an we'll move in with the fleet. If you somehow failed because the Imperials set a trap and just blasted your commando out of the sky, well, we'll simply turn around and flee".

Um, where? Because I don't remember that or anything to that effect from the movie.

[jollyreaper]

Listen, the only definitive answer for all of the plot holes -- they were making it up as they went along! You just have to step outside the story and consider that reality. Vader was not Anakin when Episode IV was written. Leia was not Luke's sister when Episode V was written. None of the prequel BS existed when Episode VI existed.

Is it possible to graft a new story onto an existing one? Yes, of course. You can tell a further adventure in a setting or you could go back to explain how things ended up the way they were. Case in point, the Angelus/Spike backstory in Buffy and Angel. When Darla was first introduced, she was a throwaway character. Whedon expanded a lot on this backstory. I'd wager that almost none of it existed from the start. Spike was originally going to be a one-season villain and be gone. Plans changed, backstories were expanded, connections drawn between characters, and it all held up. It held up because the writers wanted it to make sense. Spike and Angel had a history, how? Darla was important to Angel since she made him. What were the dynamics like?

Lucas made it up as he went along. Technically, that's how people tend to write fiction. If you're writing a full novel, your first draft is likely to have a lot of mistakes. Character developments lack support, certain things that should have been clear aren't, and there's likely quite a few conceptual boners. So the revision process cleans all that up before the book goes public. Writing a serial, that's more difficult. You don't get to rewrite what's already gone out. If you made a mistake, you have to write around it.

So to make a long post short, the Star Wars story is riddled with holes that are a natural result of "making it up as you go" with little attention paid to plausibility. The worst of those mistakes were compounded by the prequels because they shone light on the weakest connections of the original trilogy, weaknesses that were easier to ignore because the original movies were so enjoyable.

[Wyrm]

So to make a long post short, the Star Wars story is riddled with holes that are a natural result of "making it up as you go" with little attention paid to plausibility. The worst of those mistakes were compounded by the prequels because they shone light on the weakest connections of the original trilogy, weaknesses that were easier to ignore because the original movies were so enjoyable.

Yeah, no shit. Nobody is at all interested in finding the root cause of the plot holes because the root cause was never in dispute. What is in dispute is what the plot holes are and why they are plot holes.

[Vympel]

Here's a plot hole (assuming that's even the right term) I just thought of: why did it take Ben three years to finally send Luke to Dagobah? Why not tell him to go immediately after the Battle of Yavin?

"The Force will be with you always. Oh, and by the way, you must to go to the Dagobah system. There you will learn from Yoda. The Jedi master who instructed me."

Yeah, that always bothered me too. Especially since the older Luke got the harder he'd be to train.

This is why that Anakin-as-a-child thing in TPM was so flawed - what a perfect parallel that could've been set up, to have Anakin and Luke commence their formal training at roughly the same age - i.e. their 20s, thereby mirroring the risks.

Instead Anakin's two old when he's ten. Blah.

[Darth Yan]

I always felt that star wars had very few plot holes. Even though it was made up as it went along, it was open ended enough so that it could be easily retconed internally or explained away. The only real gripe is why obi wan was never told luke leia was his sister

[Metahive]

The movie is a dramatization, not a complete mission spec for the Rebel assault. Since the entire mission hinges on getting through the shield, a "Go/No Go" condition would be a basic requirement that would cut out a lot of uncertainty in the mission — if the shuttle failed to get through the shield, then the mission is a wash anyway, and you'd like to know this fact before you rush in to assault a target you can't possibly destroy. Checking that the shuttle reported in at the specified time, and signals "Go" to indicate it got through the shield helps you decide whether or not to commit your forces to attacking the Death Star II at this time, try to come up with another strategy (you may have to settle for destroying the Death Star at a later date, without Palpy aboard as a bonus), or even pussy out completely and disband the Rebellion. Sure, it's cowardly, but you'll be alive.

Okay, let's play hardball. In the movie the rebel fleet decides to jump. No mention of any sort of signal. They jump in and immediately decide to attack the Death Star. No mention of any signal. They only find out that they've been had when the Empire is jamming their sensors. Later Lando begs Ackbar to give Han more time and they find out he was successful by noticing that the shield has dropped (so...the DS2 stopped jamming?).
Also, if Palpatine suspected that any sort of Go! signal was involved he would have been forced to let them destroy the facility on the planet to be sure since otherwise the rebel fleet wouldn't have gotten the Go! signal and possibly not initiated the assault. That's why working overtime to get the Death Star's own shields going instead of the main weapon would have been the nastier surprise and made whatever happens on the Sanctuary Moon irrelevant.

Um, where? Because I don't remember that or anything to that effect from the movie.

That's their plan according to what happens on-screen.

I reject your rationalization first by invoking Occam's Razor, since assuming they had some sort of signal system, despite it not being mentioned at all on screen adds variables when the simpler explanation is that they just acted stupidly and second by calling it an Appeal to Incredulity ("I can't imagine they would have been that stupid").

[Wyrm]

Okay, let's play hardball. In the movie the rebel fleet decides to jump. No mention of any sort of signal.

I say again, the movie is a dramatization/documentary, not a mission spec. You can't expect them to stuff every relevant piece of information into it. That's boring.

They jump in and immediately decide to attack the Death Star. No mention of any signal.

Again, not a mission spec.

They only find out that they've been had when the Empire is jamming their sensors.

Why does the presence of jamming, which may be deployed anytime after the shuttle cleared the shield, have anything to do with the "Go/No Go" signal? Remember, the broad shape of the plan is known to the Empire.

Later Lando begs Ackbar to give Han more time and they find out he was successful by noticing that the shield has dropped (so...the DS2 stopped jamming?).

Yet Lando was reasonably sure that Han got through the shield and was not blown up/captured by the Empire before setting foot on Endor. That supports my hypothesis, not yours. Furthermore, the purpose of the jamming was to confuse the Rebel fleet long enough for the Imperial fleet to move in. Once the Rebel fleet was trapped, it had served its purpose.

Also, if Palpatine suspected that any sort of Go! signal was involved he would have been forced to let them destroy the facility on the planet to be sure since otherwise the rebel fleet wouldn't have gotten the Go! signal and possibly not initiated the assault.

You're a moron. If the "go" signal was sent, it was obviously sent before the Rebel band even began their offensive on the shield generator — Palpy's precognition can easily have shown him that the fleet and the band were moving in at much the same time, to shorten the time between the shield falling and the fleet arriving as much as possible. Because remember the Imperial fleet can move in and protect the incompleted Death Star and make the Rebel's mission much harder if the time between the shields falling and the fleet arriving is sufficiently long. A surprise attack works because things happen too fast for you to react to the changing situation, so a tight sequence of events is expected.

That's why working overtime to get the Death Star's own shields going instead of the main weapon would have been the nastier surprise and made whatever happens on the Sanctuary Moon irrelevant.

And now your an expert on Star Wars technology now, huh? That's nice to know. It may not have been possible to have a self-shielded Death Star, because of time constraints, or even because the skin of the DS had not yet been completed.

Um, where? Because I don't remember that or anything to that effect from the movie.

That's their plan according to what happens on-screen.

Nothing even remotely like that was said. What we got was a bare-bones plan, as appropriate for a mission briefing. They're called "briefings" because, well... they're brief and omit a lot of important detail.

I reject your rationalization first by invoking Occam's Razor, since assuming they had some sort of signal system, despite it not being mentioned at all on screen adds variables when the simpler explanation is that they just acted stupidly and second by calling it an Appeal to Incredulity ("I can't imagine they would have been that stupid").

Put down Occam's Razor, sport. You obviously don't know how to use it and will only hurt yourself. Occam's Razor only works on two theories that work equally well in explaining the phenomenon in question. By definition, your explanation of how things played out in Jedi does not work as well as my explanation, as yours points to holes in the plot that my explaination explicity fills.

My assumptions don't hold a candle to the big assumption you're making, that somehow the movie is a complete mission spec of the Rebel assault on the Death Star. The mission is a surprise attack, so it will involve a tight series of events by definition no matter how many coordinating signals are sent. The signal has an important function of letting the fleet know that the mission is still live, because if it's dead, an attack that will never succeed is not needed, and contingency plans can be deployed immediately. This assumption handsomely pays for itself by plugging two holes in the plot, which your explanation explicitly opens and thus makes your explanation less likely by definition.

As to Apeal to Ignorance? Well, that people who have worked up into the position of battle planning would be halfway competent in planning military attacks is not a great stretch of the imagination. They just had the misfortune of running afoul of a precog. No one but a tight circle of insiders even knew Palpy was a Force-sensitive. That's not incompetence — that's bad luck.

[jollyreaper]

Here's a plot hole (assuming that's even the right term) I just thought of: why did it take Ben three years to finally send Luke to Dagobah? Why not tell him to go immediately after the Battle of Yavin?

"The Force will be with you always. Oh, and by the way, you must to go to the Dagobah system. There you will learn from Yoda. The Jedi master who instructed me."

Yeah, that always bothered me too. Especially since the older Luke got the harder he'd be to train.

This is why that Anakin-as-a-child thing in TPM was so flawed - what a perfect parallel that could've been set up, to have Anakin and Luke commence their formal training at roughly the same age - i.e. their 20s, thereby mirroring the risks.

Instead Anakin's two old when he's ten. Blah.

That's the only logical time for it to have happened based on Kenboi's tale. If Anakin was already a good pilot, that sort of implies he's a serving adult. Making him a pod racer doesn't cut it. So Anakin is someone who is a latent force user, probably attributed his success to luck and has been relying on it for a while. Jedi are probably akin to knights in the middle ages, you hear about them and maybe see one in the distance in a great city but you don't hang with them. Military circumstances brought them together and that's the first time a Jedi has seen his skills and realizes that he has such potential.

My favored interpretation of the Force is that it takes relatively little effort to tap into it if someone shows you how, the difference between a martial artist training since he was a little boy to become a deadly warrior versus handing a teenage recruit a gun and he's combat-ready. This is why the dark side adepts build skill quickly. Jedi training is all about learning the restraint to use the skills responsibly and a master only shows the student what he's capable of handling. That's why training takes so long. So if you rush it, show a 20-yr old how to do all this in a year or two, it's more power than can be handled responsibly.

And you're exactly right about the parallels being perfect. Kenobi screwed up with Anakin and now here's another Skywalker and he's ready to make that same mistake.

The only flaw here is that the whole idea of Kenobi's exile being planned goes out the window. Never made sense anyway. If it was planned, he would have been training Luke as an adept from the start. The only way the existing storyline makes sense is if Kenobi was so burned by what happened in the past that he renounced the Force and thought the only amends he could offer was letting Anakin's child grow up ignorant of his father's legacy.

The way A New Hope played out was completely innocent of the later plot developments. Anakin was not Vader, Vader was not Luke's father, there was no reason for Luke to be in hiding. Being the son of a Jedi Vader killed years ago meant nothing. And the simply storyline made more sense. Luke is the son of a dead friend of Kenboi's. Kenobi is content to let him live with his adopted family. When great events sweep into his life again, he realizes that neither he nor Luke have the luxury of sitting this one out. That's when he decides to start showing Luke Force tricks.

Really, if you accept the new storyline, you're back to the classic wall-banger logic of the "parents with a secret history" trope you run into all the time. Mom, dad, or both of them are wizards/ninja/warriors or something and want to leave that life and live normally. They raise their kids completely ignorant of that history and with no practical training in those arts. Now the past has caught up with them and deadly perils are all around and the kids are unprepared for what's to come. It would make more sense for the parents to give them training in their special skills while keeping the history secret in the hopes they never find out. Then if some ninja shows up trying to kill them, the parents can show the kids that the fence-painting and deck-waxing exercises are also really great for combat.

[jollyreaper]

So to make a long post short, the Star Wars story is riddled with holes that are a natural result of "making it up as you go" with little attention paid to plausibility. The worst of those mistakes were compounded by the prequels because they shone light on the weakest connections of the original trilogy, weaknesses that were easier to ignore because the original movies were so enjoyable.

Yeah, no shit. Nobody is at all interested in finding the root cause of the plot holes because the root cause was never in dispute. What is in dispute is what the plot holes are and why they are plot holes.

They're plot holes because nobody cared about writing the new stuff coherently. And there's really no way to retcon them because they are too large to patch.

[Galvatron]

And you're exactly right about the parallels being perfect. Kenobi screwed up with Anakin and now here's another Skywalker and he's ready to make that same mistake.

The only flaw here is that the whole idea of Kenobi's exile being planned goes out the window. Never made sense anyway. If it was planned, he would have been training Luke as an adept from the start. The only way the existing storyline makes sense is if Kenobi was so burned by what happened in the past that he renounced the Force and thought the only amends he could offer was letting Anakin's child grow up ignorant of his father's legacy.

How do you figure? Ben said Owen wouldn't let Luke have Anakin's lightsaber. Seems to me that he was willing to train Luke, but Owen forbade it.

On the other hand, I do agree that it makes little sense that Obi-Wan brought Luke to the Larses. I think it would've made more sense if Beru had actually been his biological maternal aunt and that it was his own mother who dropped him off on Tatooine.

[Darth Yan]

they needed luke to grow up with a real family so that he wouldn't develop anakin's emotional constipation. Or they didn't know how to raise kids. Owen and Beru were the only people they knew they could trust so voila

[jollyreaper]

And you're exactly right about the parallels being perfect. Kenobi screwed up with Anakin and now here's another Skywalker and he's ready to make that same mistake.

The only flaw here is that the whole idea of Kenobi's exile being planned goes out the window. Never made sense anyway. If it was planned, he would have been training Luke as an adept from the start. The only way the existing storyline makes sense is if Kenobi was so burned by what happened in the past that he renounced the Force and thought the only amends he could offer was letting Anakin's child grow up ignorant of his father's legacy.

How do you figure? Ben said Owen wouldn't let Luke have Anakin's lightsaber. Seems to me that he was willing to train Luke, but Owen forbade it.

If the whole plan was to raise Luke up as the great hope against the Sith, letting a little something like that get in the way of things doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Makes more sense if things are as originally stated, Luke is the son of his dead friend and Kenobi has doubts about whether he should introduce Luke to that kind of life, going off on "damn fool crusades."

Thematically speaking, it's a more moving story to have a kid from humble origins become great. It's less dramatic if the kid is raised up in the full knowledge of his heritage and destiny. But you could have a hell of a dynamic if the Ben/Luke dynamic cribbed a little more from the Chinese and you had the two of them traveling around as master and disciple. Luke is being taught all the skills with the expectation that he will be a shaolin monk --er, Jedi monk? and pass on his master's teachings. Ben would gradually reveal his past to Luke. He was a Jedi Knight, he was a general, he commanded great armies. And Luke's relation in all this? It would be stronger if everyone was sure Anakin had been killed in that duel so Vader's true identity would be a surprise for everyone. How would Vader put two and two together? I'd attribute it to the Force. You'd feel something from kin you wouldn't feel from strangers.

On the other hand, I do agree that it makes little sense that Obi-Wan brought Luke to the Larses. I think it would've made more sense if Beru had actually been his biological maternal aunt and that it was his own mother who dropped him off on Tatooine.

Or give him a new last name that wasn't his father's.

[jollyreaper]

they needed luke to grow up with a real family so that he wouldn't develop anakin's emotional constipation. Or they didn't know how to raise kids. Owen and Beru were the only people they knew they could trust so voila

If those were the only people who could be trusted, how did Leia get placed with the Organas?

[Knife]

If the whole plan was to raise Luke up as the great hope against the Sith, letting a little something like that get in the way of things doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Makes more sense if things are as originally stated, Luke is the son of his dead friend and Kenobi has doubts about whether he should introduce Luke to that kind of life, going off on "damn fool crusades."

The only 'plan' in the movie and books was to get the kids safely away from Vader and the Emperor so they wouldn't be used and trained to be more Sith. Yoda and Obi Wan were going into hiding and Obi Wan decide to watch after the boy. I do believe the novelization implies that Yoda though training Luke to be a super duper anti Sith dude from the start would just keep the failed Jedi model going. Keep in mind that Yoda figured out that the Order had been stagnate, wrong, and the Sith had grown past them. The 'old ways' weren't cutting it anymore and so something outside the box would have to happen, he just didn't know what at the time.

[Channel72]

Thematically speaking, it's a more moving story to have a kid from humble origins become great. It's less dramatic if the kid is raised up in the full knowledge of his heritage and destiny.

That's true; one of the charming things about A New Hope is that taken in isolation, it's about a nobody farm-boy who meets a wise old warrior, and goes on the adventure of a life-time, winding up an epic hero. All of that sort of changed with Empire Strikes Back; now all of a sudden Luke is basically a super-human prince with a convoluted back-story. However, this thematic change was probably worth it, since the idea of Vader as Luke's father is incredibly compelling (not to mention the best reveal in cinematic history).

[Wyrm]

Yeah, no shit. Nobody is at all interested in finding the root cause of the plot holes because the root cause was never in dispute. What is in dispute is what the plot holes are and why they are plot holes.

They're plot holes because nobody cared about writing the new stuff coherently. And there's really no way to retcon them because they are too large to patch.

What? That's about as interesting as saying "the sky is blue". I mean "why they are plot holes" to be much the same as what it would take to fix them: what specifically are the defects that makes it a plot hole rather than something omitted (as any story must do as a matter of necessity).