They way I always saw it was Tarkin was like a Fleet Admiral, and Vader was like the Secretary of Defense, not really in the same structure. While on the ship Tarkin was in Command, because it was his job and he was used to doing the day to day things that entailed and took care of the ‘how to do it’. Vader was an advisor/observer and more of the higher level ‘what to do’.
There was clearly a bit of a pissing contest between them over who really was in charge, Tarkin showing off his command and giving Vader orders, and Vader egging him on a bit by interfering on the lower level aspect.
Actually this is often explained as the fact that he had a small aircraft called a T-16 skyhopper (you can see Luke playing with a model of one in the garage, and the actual craft is partially seen in the background). According to the officer in the rebel hanger, the controls of the skyhopper are very similar to the T-65 X-wing. Plus they are both made by the Incom corp.
Of course if you look at any images of the two craft, they look nothing like each other, so how they handle even vaguely alike is a mystery to me.
Vader going from underling to second in command after a new hope could simply be a matter of everyone who was ahead of him getting blown up on the Death Star. As to how he ended up as an underling, well he did fail the emperor pretty miserably getting defeated by obi wan, during the emperor/Yoda fight in revenge of the sith Palpatine tells Yoda it doesn’t matter if he wins because Anakin will be stronger than both of them… well that went out the window when he got chopped into bits by Obi so i can see the Emperor not being entirely pleased with him.
Bear in mind that the screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back was written by veteran SF writer and screenwriter Leigh Brackett (It was universally hailed as better-written than the original Star Wars), and that may have something to do with the difference in characterization.
My theory is a bit different - at the time of Ep.4, the Emperor’s power wasn’t truly absolute. He needed the cooperation - and loyalty - of people like Tarkin in order to stay on the throne. After all, in dictatorships, all generals are also politicians (they have to be, if they want to stay generals). Tarkin was probably an ambitious man, and was definately a man with power and resources of his own, so he needed to be mollified in order to stay compliant. Vader, on his part, had no real power of his own - only what the Emperor could delegate to him. Thus, he was sent to the Grand Moff both as an reward, as a sign of the Emperor’s cooperation, and as a way to keep a discreet eye on a dangerous vassal.
By Ep.5, Tarkin had been eliminated and as a result the Emperor had consolidated more power - power he awarded Vader, who he trusted most, to do his personal bidding.
Thinking about it somemore, Secretary of Defense isn’t the best analogy. Something like director of the CIA, or even more accurate something in a more authoritarian state, like head of the Gestapo, or KGB fits better for what I imagine Vader’s position. Not in the military at all, but directly serving the state.
And given the Emperor’s style, the in-fighting would have been instigated by him to see which organization served his purposes better. Vader obviously won in the sequels, partly because the military structure was dead, but also partly because Vader’s son was finally revealed and instrumental in it’s destruction, which showed that the mystic/jedi-sith side of things trumped the military side of things again.
(do you ever get the feeling you have put way more thought into it that Lucas ever did )
Leight Brackett wrote a screenplay and then promptly died before any revisions could be made.
The script was found to be exactly what Lucas didn’t want and so it was passed on to Lawrence Kasdan, who had just completed the script for Raiders of the Lost Ark.
I seem to remember reading somewhere (TheForce.net?) that a Grand Moff was essentially a military regional governor, with a “region” (or whatever the appropriate term is) being a honkin’ big chunk of the galaxy. There were only a handful of Grand Moffs. As such, the various Grand Moffs were, collectively, the political “second-in-command”, answering only to the Emperor. In this case, the Empire was organized more like a large corporation, with the Emperor as President/CEO and the Grand Moffs analogous to regional or departmental Vice Presidents. Tarkin was in command of the Death Star because it was researched, developed, and built in his “department”.
Vader was not technically a part of the political/corporate structure. He was a … consultant
In the situation as we find it at the beginning of Episode IV Tarkin is the one with direct power. It flows from the Emperor, to whatever doubles as the Empire’s Joint Chief’s and eventually to Tarkin as a quasi-admiral/enforcer.
Vader’s role, in the military sense, is more that of a staff specialist or special envoy. He has no direct power over the officers aboard the Death Star but carries enormous informal power due to that fun Table of Organization dotted line directly from the Emperor to him.
So he obeys Tarkin because he is, in the end, an obedient servant of the new order and the Emperor. Tarkin gives him orders and he obeys them. However, Tarkin had best be careful not to give any ‘Now on to Coruscant to blow it up!’ orders or Vader will kill him and report back.
The Empire is all about the hierarchy. Tarkin had official power and Vader obeyed that power.
I suspect that by the time Episode V occured things had changed. Vader is clearly the man with direct authority over The Executor and it’s fleet. He’s gone from a dotted line to a civilian in charge of military actions. Sort of like a representative of the Department of Defense being sent to oversee at major fleet operation.
Also because, according to Expanded Universe information, Tarkin was the one who personally had it designed and built, to add power to the “Tarkin Doctrine” of ruling through fear. The Death Star was built in The Maw, a region of space that had a concentration of black holes, which limited hyperspace navigation (any sufficiently massive object will pull a ship out of hyperspace…the Empire actually has special ships called Interdictors that carry gravity generators to intercept ships in hyperspace and pull them back into regular space). Tarkin’s protege, Admiral Daala, commanded the Death Star research installation and features prominently in several EU novels.
:smack: I’m such a geek for getting into this. :rolleyes:
Look at the force composition of the rebel fighter fleet attacking the Death Star at Yavin; approximately six or seven Y-Wings and about two dozen X-Wings.
Leaving the battle, we have two X-Wings and one Y-Wing.
That’s a 1-in-6 or 1-in-7 ratio for the Y-Wings (16.67% or 14.29% survived) compared to a 2-in-24 (1-in-12) ratio for the X-Wings (8.33% survived).
By a factor or two-to-one, the Y-Wing was clearly the better craft to be in, survivability wise.
When I read this, I realized how little time I’ve invested into learning about Star Wars beyond the movies and the X-wing and Tie Fighter PC games. I had never heard about a single one of the things in this post before reading it.
Perhaps in the first movie, Tarkin was the main villian and Darth Vader was the Oddjob. Tarkin was the intellectual & planning leader, Vader was the muscle & action guy. In the original toys, there was a figure for Vader, but not Tarkin.
Star Wars made enough money to make a sequel. Vader survived the first movie and was a very popular character. In ESB, Lucas put him in charge.
I remember reading about The Maw and Interdictors in the novels. I haven’t read all of the novels, though, so I’ve missed a lot. I know, however, that a ship has to put some distance between itself and the planet it just launched from before jumping into hyperspace.
I don’t think it was quite that random. Arguments about how much of the story Lucas had already planned out aside, it’s clear that he wanted to make sequels and had some idea what was going to happen in them. The first film puts Luke and Vader into clear opposition, for example. Vader killed Luke’s dad, after all. Nothing says “I’m your nemesis” like killing someone’s dad. But they never even meet each other in the first movie. There’s almost no direct conflict: Vader shoots at Luke in the trench a few times, then gets taken out by someone else entirely. Pretty clearly, Lucas from the start was planning for a big showdown between these two in a later movie. Making Vader a bigger villain is a good way to make the showdown more important. All the other stuff (He’s really your dad! She’s really your sister! He’s really your dad’s old Erector Set!) is debatable, but that much is pretty obviously intended to follow Star Wars.
As far as the Vader-Tarkin dynamic in the first movie, think of it like this: Vader is the Vice President of the Empire, while Tarkin is the Navy Chief of Staff. Technically, Vader does outrank him, but he has no authority over him.
Well I watched all six movies on Cinemax so take that!
My comments:
Ep V: ESB - Watching Luke screaming “NOOOOOOO!!!” on the platform after learning Vader’s his dad I’m like “hey! he does take after his dad!”
Ep II: AOTC - What’s cooler than Samuel L. Jackson cutting off a Fett’s head with a lightsaber? NOTHING!
Ep VI: ROTJ - The Death Star II was not in it’s “final stages of completion”. The thing was half built! Final stages of completion is like putting up the drywall and installing the railings over those giant pits people always fall into!
Ep V: ESB - The Battle of Hoth is still the best battle of the entire series because it is the only one that fought like an actual battle would be fought - dug into trenches. Every other ground battle - Naboo, Geonosis, all the Ep III battles - is fought like a combination of Braveheart and a Lucasarts videogame. Dozens of clone troopers, Jedi and robots running around who should have been cut down in seconds by blaster fire.
Ep I-III - Armored clones fighting droids suck. They needed to either humanize the clone warriors or do something to make me give a shit about which army of emotionless automatons won!
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