The Romulan Republic wrote:I would hate it, possibly to the point of declaring the entire new trilogy non-canon, if they went with the "Endor holocaust", not that I think that they will. Its a stupid, ugly little meme that doesn't really fit with the films but that some fans insist on treating as fact, probably because they hate the Ewoks and enjoy fantasizing about Endor getting burned to the ground. As for the argument that such a thing would have to happen? How hard is it to say "The Rebels put a shield over Endor."? Not very.
I actually do have to agree somewhat from a thematic perspective. The idea that the Rebels deliberately exposed both their commandos and the indigenous population of the moon to the destruction of the Death Star just doesn't fit. The problem with the shield idea was that in the EU the Imperial fleet seemed to fight the Rebels for hours after the destruction of the Death Star, making it impossible for the Rebels to do anything. The fact that said EU is now irrelevant makes things better.
I wasn't suggesting this because I want it to be the case. I personally wasn't that bothered by ewoks. I saw the films young enough that they don't really bother me(the same with Jar Jar as well actually).
Irbis wrote:
You mean, the shield they just done exploding ten minutes earlier? That one?
In SW strongest shields stop energy weapons, not matter. See why X-Wings were able to attack DS1 at all and why they had to use proton torpedoes, not guns. Or why Executor was destroyed. How something ineffective like that would stop million millions of tons of military grade armour raining from orbit?
So why did the strike team need to destroy DS2's shield if X-wings could fly right through it? While there are ways to penetrate capital ship shields with fighters during combat, a flaw not shared by the vulnerable second Death Star, they can in fact block matter as well as pure energy hits. If shields were really useless against missiles why would more capital ships not use them? Executor was only destroyed after the Rebel fleet targeted it. As for the DS1 hit, that section of the Death Star was unshielded against particle weapons because it was a ventilation system. My guess as to why is that missiles were generally considered less accurate than guns for precision attacks and it wasn't considered a serious enough threat in the presence of heavy jamming*. This does fit the fact that very few Clone Wars era fighters carried significant missile armaments.
* I realize that modern tech would likely be capable of such a hit using unjammable INS type systems. Not to mention that any naval engineer(or whatever warships designers in SW are called) worth anything would see that it was a threat in the same way that smokestacks have been protected on warships for most of the last century in reality. Eve low probability hits should be defended against if the potential for damage is severe enough
Captain Seafort wrote:In other words the surface of Endor facing the Death Star is in exceptionally deep shit, and those closest to the point of detonation (i.e. the shield generator) are dead. So a) why are Han and Leia present for the victory celebration instead of being either incinerated or in a medical bay dying of acute radiation sickness and b) why are the rebels holding said victory celebration on the most heavily irradiated bit of the moon.
The logical conclusion is that either a) the novel was wrong and the planetary shield wasn't knocked out by the destruction of the Death Star shield generator or b) it's failure was caused by the generator's destruction tripping the circuit breakers, or similar, and it was restored before the Death Star exploded.
That is probably among the most reasonable theories. It would also explain why in the novel Palpatine ordered the Death Star to fire on Endor rather than simply using a Star Destroyer to bombard the planet from orbit.
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Another interesting theory is that of a repulsorlift cradle that held the Second Death Star in a stable orbit and then pushed most of the falling derbies away. Though this wouldn't resolve the flash issue. This is discussed in some detail in
this old thread.
