In the original Star Wars film, the Rebel blockade runner Tantive IV is overtaken by Darth Vader’s Star Destroyer, and several Rebels are killed trying to prevent the Stormtroopers from boarding. The remainder of them are captured alive at Darth Vader’s orders, and we never see them again.
Is there a canon (or Legends canon) explanation for what happened to them? Did they get taken to the Death Star or something, and die when it was destroyed?
I just wondered that myself (when watching “Princess Leia’s Stolen Death Star Plans”, actually!).
I hope someone knows the canon answer. I assume they all got shipped to some mining prison planet somewhere. Or were imprisoned on the DS, pending sentencing (trial? what trial?), with the unexpected identical disposition to their cases.
Movies never think of the little guy, the spear carriers, the pawns in game of life.
Except in the SW universe - I wouldn’t be surprised if each one, including the droids, has a novel about them.
Yeah, that was what made me think of this too!
Vader only wanted the passengers alive. He didn’t care about the crew.
If you’re going to tell the senate that all aboard were lost you don’t want them turning up later.
Stormtroopers gotta eat. (beats all that freeze dried stuff on the Star Destroyers !)
Canon answer—torture, interrogation, then execution.
The Tantive, & the bodies of her crew, were discarded into a star.
Except for Lei, C3-PO, & R2, there were no survivors.
If that’s the way the empire nominally operates, then there’s no reason to surrender. Fight until death. Who’s want to be tortured and then killed? No future in it.
OK, torturing and killing the crew is SOP for an evil empire, but why pitch the ship into a star? It seems like it’d be useful to have a ship of a type commonly used by the Rebellion: Use it for infiltrations and false-flag missions. Or if you don’t have any of those planned, at least scrap it, or use it as target practice in training missions. Throwing it away is just wasteful.
The ship would certainly be used by the Empire. Ships in Star Wars seem to last forever.
I don’t think they really had a choice in the manner. The Tantive IV was disabled by ion cannon and turbolaser fire, pulled into the Devastator’s main landing bay with a tractor beam and then boarded by stormtroopers, of which an Imperial star destroyer has several orders of magnitude more of than the Correlian corvette could possibly have defenders.
I meant after they were boarded. The combat in the corridors.
They were sent to the spice mines of Kessell, or smashed into who-knows-what.
Probably processed then released. Once it was clear that they were only defending their Princess and were not otherwise involved in the taking of the plans.
Far more effective then killing them, let the word spread that the Rebellion is a bunch of traitorous upper class twits who’ll get the little guy killed in their games unlike the Empire which is merciful.
Just looked at the scene in Star Wars (around 8:20 in the Despecialized Edition):
Imp Officer: She’ll die before she’ll tell you anything.
Darth Vader: Leave that to me. Send a distress signal. And then inform the Senate all aboard were killed.
I’d guess it’s likely, just from that, that he had everyone on the ship killed. He certainly wouldn’t allow them to be freed!
Blockade Runners like the Tantive IV are a dime a dozen in the Star Wars universe. Strangely, despite appearing to have great big cannons on the sides, I’ve never seen them fire a single shot.
One of the things I liked about Rogue One, was that it finally portrayed rebels as being every bit as casual about killing people as the Empire. That’s the true nature of life and death struggles.
If you wonder about the fate of the passengers of the Tantive IV, you might want to spend a moment on the fate of all the faceless stormtroopers. They get mowed down in droves by the Rebellion, without a second thought that any of them might be a human being.
They were bound, with their eyes held open, ala A Clockwork Orange and made to watch the rest of the SW movies. Darth Vader was a cruel SOB.
And each TIE fighter had a pilot with as rich and fulfilling a life as
Porkins or Biggs but we are expected to cheer when Luke kills them…
In The Force Awakens, it’s worse - we’re explicitly told that New Order Troopers are forcibly recruited as kids and “conditioned” (brainwashed) - you can’t send someone for “reconditioning”, like Finn was scheduled for, without them having been conditioned first. But even Finn has no problem immediately mowing down a whole hangar full of his fellow brainwashed child soldiers - with cannon fire - just as soon as he possibly can. And whooping while doing it.
They were on the B ark.