Galvatron wrote: 2025-04-27 09:19pmAre we talking canon or headcanon? In canon, the official narrative is that Alderaan was destroyed for treason.
Galvs, I've gone back to the ANH script after remembering some scenes and found three lines that are pertinent to our discussion:
1.) Vader: "Commander, tear this ship apart until you've found those plans!"
2.) Commander: "Holding her [Leia] is dangerous. If word of this gets out, it could generate sympathy for the Rebellion in the senate."
[discussion about torturing Leia to get information]
3.) Vader: "Leave that to me. Send a distress signal and then inform the Senate that all aboard were killed"
These three statements establish that the Empire decided fairly early on (within 15 minutes of capture) what the official story was going to be for the Imperial Senate and that at least SOME people could think ahead.
Given the advanced state of space travel in the SW universe by this point in the SW canon -- i.e. hyperdrives are about as reliable as a small block Chevy -- to the point that maintenance technicians at Cloud City can easily fix Han's crude attempts at "repair" and it functions reliably...
...this means that from the perspective of the galaxy at large; any kind of event that would result in a distress signal being sent; but 100% fatalities on a modern, well maintained Senatorial ship from a Core World would have been something catastrophic like a core failure or something equivalent to catastrophic hull loss for a modern airliner.
So what's going to happen if the Tantive IV is ever found?
They're going to notice:
1.) The precisely aimed turbolaser hits that crippled the engines, per Threepio: "Did you hear that? They've shut down the main reactor."
2.) The damage to the hull from the hard combat grapple done to ensure there was no chance of it escaping the Hangar Bay of the Devastator.
3.) The main airlock door being combat breached and the area surrounding the airlock being full of blast points...more specifically per Obi Wan: "And these blast points, too accurate for Sandpeople. Only Imperial stormtroopers are so precise."
4.) Blast damage being limited to the airlock and some scattered areas; indicating that the main battle occurred at the airlock area; ergo, given the crew watchbill of a CR90 Corvette, most crew and passengers survived the combat breaching.
5.) There are going to be signs of an early intensive search (deck plating pulled up, wall coverings pulled down, etc) that stopped for unknown reasons -- we know as viewers' Vader's statement: "She must have hidden the plans in the escape pod", but our 'in-universe' people won't.
The 'official' story that all were lost isn't going to mesh with the evidence showing the ship was stopped, boarded and that a good portion of crew+passengers survived the seizure. Ergo, they must have been executed post-capture or are in a prison somewhere.
Yes, you could probably have the Imperial Propaganda Bureau come up with a believable story to explain all this if the Tantive IV was "found", but it would only be enough to fool the lowest grades of mental midgets.
Another point to be made in regards to the political machinations going on amongst the political class is timing.
More specifically, we don't know just how long the Tantive IV was running from Scarif.
Was it a multi-day long cat and mouse game across the Outer Rim? Or was it a few hours?
In either case, you'd see a lot of things going on in the background -- Rebels gathering support, Senators making decisions, shipments being diverted, etc etc.
A New Hope itself takes place over a rather lengthy period -- someone on Reddit noticed that the droids landed around noon local Tatooine time in ANH (based off sun angles).
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https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comme ... %20minutes.]
My rough timeline is:
Tatooine Day #1 - Droids land, get lost in desert; captured by Jawas (12 hr Half-Day since they landed at local noon)
Tatooine Day #2 - Droids Sold by Jawas to Owen Lars, we see the famous Binary Sunset (24 hrs)
Tatooine Day #3 - Luke Meets old Ben, finds Leia's Message, Death Star Conference (Senate Dissolved @ Noon local time), Imperials Attack Lars Homestead. (24 hrs)
Tatooine Day #4 - Selling things, Travelling to Mos Eisley, Finding Han Solo, and Escaping Tatooine. (18 hrs)
Officially (in the SW Rule books) a class 0.5x hyperdrive can travel from the Outer Rim to the Core Worlds in 48 hours. Figure that Han knows a bunch of secret travel lanes and has juked the Falcon to go a bit faster -- Say, 30 hours?
Our heroes arrive almost immediately (hours) after Alderaan was destroyed.
Thus, the ANH Timeline becomes:
T Minus ??? Hours = Tantive IV escapes Scarif with Death Star Plans.
T+0 Hours = Tantive IV captured by Devastator over Tatooine. Vader orders that the Senate be informed that all aboard died.
T+48~ hours = Tarkin announces that the Imperial Senate has been dissolved.
T+108~ hours = Alderaan destroyed.
What was going on in Coruscant (and elsewhere) during those two critical periods:
A.) Alderaanian Consular Ship reported lost with all hands to Dissolution of Senate (48 hours)
B.) Dissolution of Imperial Senate to Destruction of Alderaan (60 hours)
That's plenty of time for political skullduggery not just with Mothma, but with sympathetic figures inside the Imperial apparatus who are wavering and might break either way.
In Phase A (first 48 hours since capture) it's in Imperial interests to liquidate the Tantive IV as quickly as possible, because they don't know what else might be on it and they can't risk inconvient facts getting loose as they prepare to dissolve the Imperial Senate.
Palpatine was no fool, he would have had a gameplan ready for dissolution of the Senate with likely outcomes gamed out; Senators to take into custody; because they (and others) are likely to have top of the line holo-net setups and can send/receive messages almost as fast as he (Palpatine) can.
Remember, the first rule in a coup is to control the communications networks -- that's a bit hard to do when a high ranking political figure can get near instanteous (1-2 second delay) communications with someone literally on the other side of the Galaxy [i.e. Sidious telling the Trade Federation what to do from Coruscant via holograms in TPM].
That kind of information velocity is a dangerous two-way street -- as I told Frank Hipper in person, how many times in history has a rebellion/coup/whatnot come undone due to messages being lost or delayed?
Ahem.
I might be putting far too much thought into this -- but all this ties into something I've been telling Frank Hipper in person, and something I've mentioned earlier upthread (and elsewhere):
Most Star Wars stuff is aimed at maybe 7 to 13 year olds; simplified plots leaning towards 'gosh that's neat' eye candy.
Nobody's really thinking ahead in designing the plots; relying on the LFL Story Group under Chee to maybe retrofit/backfit everything after the fact.
The guys running Andor turned the target age up to...about maybe nineteen or twenty.
The stories are still simplified, but they're at the level of a first year political science major; hence the great meme from Season 1 of ANDOR:
as well as Nemik's Manifesto from S1:
There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy.
Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they've already enlisted in the cause.
Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And then remember this.
The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.
Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire's authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege.
Remember this. Try.
Bonus Closing Point:
In ANH, when the gang arrives on Yavin IV; the greeter who rushes to meet Leia says:
"When we heard about Alderaan, we were afraid that you were... lost along with your father."
Think about that line for a moment....
If they were thinking that she was lost with Bail on Alderaan; then that means they thought she was on Alderaan all this time. She wasn't on the official crew or passenger log for the Tantive IV.
So what's Vader going to think when "Bring me the Ambassador" brings someone who wasn't even officially on the ship in the first place?
No one hates Star Wars like Star Wars fans.
