So I’m watching Clone Wars (chapter 8, if I’m not mistaken). At one point, Obi-Wan pierces the breastplate of some muscular-looking evil droid: the lightsabre comes out of its back. Cue cool Tartakovsky stand-off moment. Evil droid chuckles evilly and tosses Obi-Wan aside. While Obi-Wan is sent flying backwards through the air, the lightsabre, still fully functional, is still lodged inside the droid.
I’m thinking: this can’t be right. Do lightsabres work when someone’s not holding them? I mean, you never see a jedi or Sith throw a lightsabre across the room to spear someone, do you?
(I know there have been some threads about how lightsabres work in the past. I don’t remember anything about this, though. So, who knows the answer?)
Near the end of Return of the Jedi I’m pretty sure I remember Vader throwing his lightsaber at Luke to flush him out of his hiding place. (or was that in Empire Strikes Back? It’s been a while.) So they’ll still work if nobody’s holding them.
On preview, Han used Luke’s lightsaber on Hoth, so they don’t require concentration to use (Han has no skill with the Force that I know of, and Luke was out cold) so they’re “just” weapons. Maybe the skill is required to use them effectively, instead of just hacking open a dead snow-beast.
IIRC lightsabers have two settings. A ‘safety’ setting which requires continual contact for the saber to remain active and a ‘constant’ lock that allows it to remain active when thrown.
Two settings? That makes a bit of sense. Still, in the context of the Clone Wars episode, we’d have to assume that Obi-Wan switched to ‘constant’ for some reason, before being brushed aside. Why would he do that?
Perhaps the earlier Lightsabers, from the peaceful Republic era, had safeties, but later sabers from the late Clone War period abandoned them so they could be thrown in battle.
After all, the Jedi were just glorified cops, at first, & they would have been reprimanded if they endangered the public by throwing a lighsaber.
I don’t think there’s any force ability required to use a saber. Just flip the switch.
I can’t think of any canon example of a saber being on without being held, but in some of the games, you can throw the saber and guide it with the force.
Oh, and Durge isn’t a Droid, BTW. Which should be clear by the end of that episode.
Well, kind of off topic, but rather than start another thread I’ll ask it here.
Okay, so the lightsabre stayed on and was “lodged” into the “evil droid”. How come the lightsabre didn’t fall to the ground? I mean, they can cut through anything like butter can’t they? I’m not a star wars buff, so I could be way off base here. And if I am, feel free to flame me
But I would think that the weight of the handle would be enough to pull the sabre down through the “evil droid”, or atleast pull the handle part down, resulting in the “blade” going up through the droid from behind…
In the expanded universe, there are lots of examples of Jedi throwing their sabers at people. Combining that with telekinesis, makes it even more deadly. IIRC, in one of the Zahn books Luke is attacked by about 8 people, he tries to run for a bit, but finally when he’s pinned down he throws the saber and guides it to cut down all 8 with very little effort.
Not quite like butter. Witness Qui-gon cutting through the blast doors in the phantom menace. Slow and difficult. I think we can assume that Durge’s armor (again, he’s not a droid) was sufficiently thick to slow the downward progress of the saber. Combined with his apparent healing abilities that probably were actively fighting the damage that the saber was inflicting, I can buy it not falling through him.
Of course Obiwan didn’t seem to have to try too hard to cut him in half at the end. but then, he’s Obiwan.
But then again, these shorts (while awesome) have already shown to be using a somewhat different set of physics than the actual movies. e.g. Tank Jousting
Also, in Episode One, Qui Gon used his saber to try and melt threw a huge metal door just by holding the blade in place. If the blade was stuck in Derge, wouldn’t it have just continued to burn threw him?
Also, I know the Jedi are supposed to make their own saber as part of their initiation, but I believe there are plenty of"generic" sabers out there. I doubt all the little kids you see Yoda teaching built the sabers they were using, and the rescue party seemed to have a few extra on hand for Anakin and Obi Wan. To my understanding, unless it’s a personalized saber, there’s really nothing special to it, and in the hands of anyone aside from a Jedi (or even that specific Jedi), it’s nothing more than a standard piece of equipment.
Lightsabers automatically turn off after a brief moment if they aren’t being held (we see this countless times when Jedi drop them). Like someone else pointed out, I guess we can assume if the thrower concentrates in a certain way, he can “trick” the saber into staying ignited.
However, I don’t see how the blade would have stayed stuck through the droid like that. The blades themselves have very little (if any) mass. If the droid was made out of a super-dense material, the handle would still “droop” down, being so much heavier, while the blade would slowly angle upwards, cutting the droid in half from the point he was impaled.
BUT, if he was made of this super dense material (seen in video games like Jedi Knight 2 and I guess Obi Wan), the blade wouldn’t have instantly impaled him either. Obi would have had to hold the blade against the droid’s chest and wait for the saber to burn a hole through (think of a cutting torch with an especially long flame).
If he was some sort of self-healing droid… well, then I got nothing.
